T3 B11 EOP Produced Documents Vol III Fdr- 8-2-02 Scott Pelley-CBS Interview of Rice 002

8/14/2019 T3 B11 EOP Produced Documents Vol III Fdr- 8-2-02 Scott Pelley-CBS Interview of Rice 002

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JUN .7 2 0 0 3THE WHITE HOUSE National Commissionon

Terrorist Attacks

Office of the Press Secretary AJSd OStjO^fc:Internal Transcript August 2, 2002

INTERVIEW OFNATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR CONDOLEEZZA RICEBY SCOTT PELLEY, CBSThe Roosevelt Room

2:32 P.M. EDT

Q Well, let's start with the day. The first airplanestrikes. What the first you saw, the first you heard?

DR. RICE: The first that I heard was when my executiveassistant came into the office to say that a plane had hit the_ _World Trade Center. I thought, what a terrible accident that is.And I called the President, who was in Florida for an educationevent. And I said, Mr. President, a plane has hit the WorldTrade Center. And he said, what a terrible accident. And Ithink we thought that maybe a twin engine plane of some-kind, asmall plane.

I then went to my staff meeting, my senior staff meeting-downstairs in the Situation Room. And my executive assistanthanded me a note ancT said, a^second plane had hit the World TradeCenter. And I thought, my God, this is a terrorist attack.

Q You knew.DR. RICE: I knew. I knew right away. Because one plane,

perhaps an accident -- and a horrible accident and foreseeableaccident, but an accident. The second plane I had no doubt. AndI think we had all known that there might be at some point intime an attempt against the United States, perhaps that's in theback of your mind at a time like that.

Q When you heard about the second plane, and you wereconvinced in your own mind it was terrorists, whose name did youput on that?

DR. RICE: It wasn't very long before I thought al Qaeda,because we had gone through a fairly extensive review of policytoward al Qaeda. I think George Tenet had, in February -- theCIA Director had in February talked about the threat of al Qaedato the United States. And the fact that it was big and

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spectacular said to me this is probably al Qaeda. But that wasthe least of my concerns at that moment.Because shortly after the second plane hit the World TradeCenter, I went into the Situation Room, the Situation Center totry and find the National Security Council principals, to bringthem to a meeting or to talk about what had happened. And it's

amazing the things that race through your mind at a time likethat.Colin Powell I knew was in Latin America. And my firstthought was, is he in Colombia? Well, no, I think he's in Peru.So trying to find Secretary Powell. And then I tried to findSecretary Rumsfeld. And I couldn't raise him. And all of asudden I looked behind me and a plane had hit the Pentagon. Andit was not long after that that the Secret Service came and said,you have to go to the bunker; the Vice President rs alreadythere, there may be something headed for the White House.Q How did you get there?DR. RICE: I hardly remember getting there. It was onemoment to stop and talk to the President again and to say thatWashington was under attack and so he should probably not comeTback. We were beginning to talk about the fact that if he landedat Andrews Air Force Base, would that just make Air Force One abig target.We, or course, in that particular point didn't know how manyplanes were headed for various destinations and various symbolsof American power. I remember wandering along, or being pushedalong, in fact, in the corridors, stopping briefing just when Igot into the PEOC to call my family/ my aunt and uncle inAlabama, and say, I'm fine, you have to tell everybody that I'mfine. They started a kind of phone tree to let my relatives knowthat everything was okay.But then settling into trying to deal with the enormity ofthat moment. And in the first few hours I think the thing thatwas on everybody's mind was how many more planes are coming.Q When you made the call to the President on your way toPEOC, do you recall that conversations?DR. RICE: I do recall the conversation. It was brief,

because I was being pushed to get off the phone and get out ofthe West Wing.Q They were hurrying you off the phone with the President?DR. RICE: They were hurrying me off the phone with thePresident. And I just said -- he said, I'm coming back. Andwe said, Mr. President, that may not be wise. My defensedirector, the person who does defense affairs for me, was

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standing next to me and he whispered, tell him that it may not bewise to come back here because Washington is under attack.And so I did that and I said, sir, we'll be in touch. Andthen I got off to the PEOC.Q Just a point of information. Do you know where he was?

Was he in the motorcade, or was he on the airplane at that point?Because these events happened pretty quickly.DR. RICE: They happened pretty quickly. I believe that hewas already at the air strip, airport, ready to get back on AirForce One in Florida. And I think that he had every intention atthat moment of trying to get back here. -Q Try to take yourself back to the moment that that bigvault door is opened and you're whisked into the PEOC. What do

you see?DR. RICE: I saw several people there. The first person

that I went to, of course, was the Vice Pres-ident, who wasalready there. And I said, I think there are a_ f ew things weneed to do. and I remember spotting Norm Mineta, the Secretaryof Transportation, and realizing all of a sudden that we weregoing to have to start grounding aircraft around the entirecountry. And there are thousands of aircraft flying at thatmoment.So Norm was sitting there checking tail numbers. And youhad the Vice President trying to write them down on a yellowlegal pad. but I went immediately from the central room in whichwe were operating to a little side room, to make a couple ofphone calls. I asked my deputy, Steve Hadley, to call DeputySecretary of State Armitage, to get out a cable to posts aroundthe world, to diplomatic posts around the world that said: theUnited States government is still functioning; the United Stateshas not been decapitated.My old nuclear war training is that you want everybody toknow that you're up and functioning when something like that

happens. I was told that Secretary Rumsfeld had changed thedefense condition and that American forces were going on alertaround the world. And so one of the first phone calls in which Iparticipated was with President Putin of Russia, who knew thatour forces were going on alert and, therefore, stood down theRussian forces that were on major exercises. And it was a lot oftrying to check-off boxes that at that point are extremelyimportant to preventing any further crisis from taking place.

Q You're an expert, a long expert in Russian affairs, youspeak Russian. Did you speak Russian to President Putin?DR. RICE: No. Usually when you are doing such things youwork through a translator. But I heard him in Russian, and I

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knew exactly what he was saying. He was saying that heunderstood that American forces were on alert. The first thinghe said is, this is a horrible thing and I should call PresidentBush.

I explained that President Bush was not in Washington. Buthe then said, we are going to stand -down our forces. And for anold Soviet specialist like me, who had spent a lot of timeworrying about spirals of alert -- we would alert, they wouldthen alert and pretty soon we would be in a state of war -- itwas a quite remarkable statement by the President of Russia, thathe recognized our common interest at this particular moment intime.

Q What did that mean to you?DR. RICE: It meant a lot. I found it quite emotional atthat moment, because it meant that the United States and Russia

were, indeed, on a different path. The President had, prior tothis, back in July at Ljubljana, when President Putin metPresidentTBush for the first time -- the President had said,you know, we're not enemies anymore, we have common securityproblems and we're "going to develop a different kind ofrelationship.

And here on the worst day that any American could imagine,that new relationship is being vivified./ > " 2Q You're inside the PEOC and there's another airplane, (A f \ t 93 is

wondered whether the PEOC was going to survive that morning.DR. RICE: You hardly think about the survival of yourself

or the building in which you're standing at a moment like that.The confusion about what planes were flying and what planesneeded to be grounded, and trying to find what tail numbers werenot responding appropriately to instructions from air controllersto get to the nearest possible airport -- that's what's on yourmind, and so you don't think we may personally be in danger here,at that moment in time.But one of the more awful moments that entire day was whenwe heard that that plane had crashed. And an order, of course,

had been given that if a plane did not respond properly toinstruction and to the fighters that were sent up to interceptplanes, that it should be shot down. And there was that horribletime when we wondered if Flight 93 had, indeed, been shot down byan American pilot.Q On the orders of the President?DR. RICE: Yes. And it was hard for a few moments to verifythat it, indeed, had crashed, not been shot down. I think that

was one of the really awful moments of that period.

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Q When word came that Flight 93 had gone down, it isquite possible that those people gave their lives for you.DR. RICE: It's entirely possible -- in fact, I think it'sprobable. They gave their lives because Americans are like thatjust countless acts of heroism that we saw on 9/11 that

really do speak to the best character of this country. And thisis a great act of heroism. They were not going to allow anotherplane to go into a building in New York or Washington. And,indeed, they gave their lives for their country more dramaticallythan most.It's also true that clearly the al Qaeda, the terroristswere trying to take out as many symbols of government as theycould: the Pentagon, perhaps the Capitol, perhaps the WhiteHouse. That in and of itself, if all of those had gone down, itwould have been an even greater shock to this country. And thesepeople saved us not only physically, but they saved uspsychologically and symbolically in a very important way, too.Q Let me ask you about one more thing in the PEOC. Yousaid the Vice President was writing down tail numbers? The VicePresident of the United States was writing down the tail numbersof airplanes that were not responding? ~DR. RICE: Yes. You-had the .Vice President of the UnitedStates, the National Security Advisor and the TransportationSecretary trying to make sense of this. At a time like that,like what we experienced, you do what you have to do. And rightthen there were several important things that had to be j3one. Wehad to make sure that the rest of the world knew we werefunctioning. We had to make sure that planes were gettinggrounded and that more planes were not being used as missilesagainst various places in the United States. We had to be surethat there were fighters up to protect the American homeland.And the Vice President was doing his part and we were alldoing our part. You don't ask at that time, is there somebodyelse who can do this job. That's not like the Vice President.He was just in there doing what had to be done.Q There were multiple planes that couldn't be accountedfor. And, in addition to that, there were warnings that therewas a plane headed to Camp David, another plane headed to the

President's ranch in Texas, explosions on the National Mall,explosions at the State Department.DR. RICE: Yes.Q What was that like in there?DR. RICE: Well, you learn when you go through as manycrisis simulations as people like me -- I taught national

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security policy, I worked at the Pentagon, I've been on theNational Security Council staff before and you go through crisissimulations. And the one thing they always say is, first reportsare always wrong.And perhaps just a little bit in the back of your mind is alittle skepticism that that report might be wrong. And you try

to react in any case, but you try not to overreact. And what wasremarkable about the PEOC that day is that it was a calmenvironment; you didn't have people running around, throwingpaper and yelling. You had a very experienced group of peoplewho were going about their jobs as best they could and doing whatneeded to get done.

But I remember no sense of panic or being overwhelmed by themoment. There were quite emotional times. And as I've said manytimes, the sense that Flight 93 might have gone down by America'sown hand was very difficult to deal with. But there was no senseof panic.

Q You asked at that time, did-we shoot it down?DR. RICE: I asked, did we shoot it down? And we couldn'tinitially get a clear answer from the Pentagon. They were prettybusy, too and they were dealing, of course, with their owncrisis, given that the Pentagon, itself, had been hit.But we eventually, after asking for several minutes -- youmust know, because a fighter would have reported that theyengaged; have any fighters reported that they engaged? -- welearned that no fighters were reporting engagement with acivilian aircraft. And at that point, it became clear thatsomething else had happened, that the plane had been driven intothe ground by some other means.Q You were watching the World Trade Center on televisionmonitors in the PEOC?DR. RICE: The television monitors were on in thebackground. But -- again, you see it out of the corner of youreye, but you're very busy doing a lot of other things.Q You saw the towers come down?DR. RICE: I did see the towers come down.Q In the PEOC, on television? 'DR. RICE: Yes. Yes. Someone said to me, "Look at that!"I remember that, "Look at that!" And I looked up, and I saw justI just remember a cloud of dust and smoke, and the horror ofthat moment.Q And the feeling in your gut?

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DR. RICE: That we'd lost a lot of Americans. And thateventually we would get these people.Q You felt the anger rising in you?DR. RICE: I felt the anger. Of course I felt the anger.

You couldn't help but feel anger at that moment.But you have to keep it under control. You, at a time likethat, have to keep the emotions under control and just try to dowhat you need to do to make sure that you're dealing with all therequirements of avoiding an even bigger crisis.Q Let me leap forward now quickly, because we're down interms of time. Much later that evening -- well, let me ask youthe question, because I don't know the answer. "At some point,within hours of the attack, a decision was made that we weren't,going to go after just these terrorists, we were going to goafter all terrorists, and all nations that harbored them. Wheredid that idea come from?DR. RICE: We had a National Security Council meeting assoon as the President was at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.And on that teleconference, the President -- videoconferencethe President said, The people who got us, we're going to getthem. This is an~act of war, and he said to Rumsfeld and to.Tenet, you better get ready, because we're going to get them.He also recognized right away that-it was global, that thiscould, have been London or Paris; that these people were not justafter us, they were after" freedom and after our values. And

that, in and of itself, made it pretty clear from the verybeginning that this was not going to be responding to whathappened in New York and Washington. This was going to be abigger challenge, of fighting global terrorism.We had done a lot of work on terrorism, on how these peoplewere supporting themselves. We knew that Afghanistan was thecenter of their operations, and we knew that they were beingharbored in a number of places. And so the line that appears inthe President's statement from the Oval that night, that says notjust the terrorists, but those who harbor them, came out of whathad been a pretty intensive discussion, over several months,about how to really deal with international terrorism.You couldn't just carve terrorists out one by one. You hadto destroy their sanctuary. A terrorist that hijacks a countryin the way that al Qaeda hijacked Afghanistan has the -advantagesof territoriality, places to train, places to run financialoperations, places to hide. And knowing that we also had toafter the Taliban, and then later anyone who harbored terrorists,was pretty deeply ingrained in this national security team, andparticularly in this President.

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Q In that first teleconference, was that the first timethat the President heard al Qaeda attached to this?DR. RICE: That was the first time. And -- George Tenetwas just asked, Who do you think did this to us? And he said,Sir, I believe it's al Qaeda. We're doing the assessment, but it

looks like, it feels like, it smells like al Qaeda.The President had heard of al Qaeda. We'd been trackingthem and looking at them. Several times he'd said, whenpresented with evidence that al Qaeda might strike here, mightstrike there -- mostly overseas, by the way; almost all of theinformation was that al Qaeda was preparing to strike-Americaninterests overseas, as they had done before.But as he heard that information, the President said, youknow, I'm tired of swatting at flies. I need a strategy toeliminate these guys. That he had done in the spring. So heknew al Qaeda, and we all knew what we were going to iave to do.Q By the next morning, there was evidence. What wasthat?DR. RICE: Well, again, you -- it wasn't as if we didn't

know this group. And we were getting reports on chatter aboutwhat had happened.But we were also putting together a picture of people that

had a certain modus operand!. And once we had that, and we knew,we were ready to put forward an ultimatum to those who wereharboring them, the Taliban, which was their sponsor.Q Leaping ahead, the speech at the National Cathedral.When the President finished that speech, there was perfectsilence. What were you thinking?DR. RICE: That service was so important to the country, andto me personally. Earlier that day, in the Cabinet Room, thePresident had held a Cabinet meeting. And he had gotten a littlechoked up when he talked about what he was about to do in goingto this national service.And I remember Colin Powell turning to him and just saying,you know, try not to use emotional words.Q Try not to choke up, Mr. President, when you make thisspeech?DR. RICE: Try not to use emotional words -- he said, Ifind it helpful not to use emotional words. But of course, thePresident had to use emotional words. And it was remarkable, hisclarity and his steadiness. And it was a bit of a metaphor for

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the way he would then lead the country, with a kind of steadinessand clarity that I think came through at that moment.Q Was it a turning point?DR. RICE: It was a turning point for many people that I'vetalked to in the administration,"friends that I've talked to who

watched that service.I'll tell you what the turning point for me personally was.

I was very sad going into that service. We had gone downMassachusetts Avenue in the motorcade, and it felt like a funeralprocession. And on the street, there was a man holding a signthat said, "God Bless America; We Will Not Be Terrorized." Andit was a very emotional moment.

And we went up Massachusetts Avenue, and there were churchbells tolling. And we got to the cathedral, we went into thecathedral, and it was very, very sad.And I looked at the program, and I thought, Why are we notsinging the national anthem at the end of this service? And wewere singing instead the Battle Hymn of the Republic. And as westood to sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, you could feel theentire congregation -- and I could certainly feel myself --stiffen, the kind of spine. And this deep sadness was being

replaced -by resolve.And the lines in the Battle Hymn of the Republic are sostirring that I think it really was transforming. And by the endof this service, I think we all felt that we still had mourningto do for our countrymen who had been lost, but that we also hada new purpose -- in not just avenging what had happened tothem, but making certain that the world was eventually going tobe safe from this kind of attack ever again.Q Let me leap ahead to Sunday morning. You've had themeetings at Camp David. The President wakes up Sunday morning,

he sees you, and what does he say?DR. RICE: I saw him Sunday morning at Camp David, andactually, he said, I want to talk to you a little bit later. I

think I know what I'm going to do.And it was when we got back here to the White House, and we

got off the helicopter, and he said, I want you to come with me.And we went up to his office in the Residence, and he said, Iknow what I want to do.

He had listened to his advisors at Camp David. He had askedthem what they thought -- it wasn't as if there were widedivergences about what to do. People had addressed the problemfrom different angles and from different perspectives. And invery, very rapid, almost staccato fashion, he said, I want to

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issue an ultimatum to the Taliban that tells them, give up the alQaeda now or face their fate. I want to use more than justairpower; this has got to have, as we came to call it, boots onthe ground to show that America is really serious. And he wentthrough piece after piece after piece.

And I can remember writing, and I was writing very fast,trying to keep up. And he said, And I want to meet with mynational security team tomorrow morning and tell them what we'regoing to do.

Q And as you were writing, you thought what?DR. RICE: As I was writing, I thought, We know what we're

going to do. We've got a plan, we've got a strategy, and nowit's going to be up to us to make this work.Q By God, he's going to do itDR. RICE: By God, he's going to do it. His resolve was so

clear. And the sense that this was not just going to be-a:pinprick or an effort to avenge this one event, but that he wasgoing to take on these terrorists in a major way, and that thiswas going to be a global war on terrorism that would be a war for

against all those who hated freedoms. It was very clear; itwas clear in his eyes, it was clear in his voice, and it's beenclear to everybody ever since.END 2:57 P.M. EOT

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