T3 B11 EOP Produced Documents Vol III Fdr- 8-28-02 David Gregory-NBC Interview of Rice 008

8/14/2019 T3 B11 EOP Produced Documents Vol III Fdr- 8-28-02 David Gregory-NBC Interview of Rice 008

1/12

R E C E I V E DTHE WHITE HOUSE JUN ^

O f f i c e of the Press Secretary N a t i o n a l Commis s i on on_____Ter ror i s t AttacksInternal Transcript August 28, 2002

INTERVIEW OF NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR CONDOLEEZZA RICEBY DAVID GREGORY OF NBC NEWS

Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Offi ce Building

9:20 A.M. EOTQ All right, Condi. Let's go back to 9/11of last year.

Tell me what that day was supposed to be like for you?DR. RICE: That day was supposed to be like a normal day at

the NSC, which is of course very busy. The President was out oftown on a short trip. And I normally travel wi th him,or SteveHadley, the Deputy Natio nal Security Advisor, but it was such ashort trip that we decided not to do that.

I was supposed to give a speech that day about Americanforeign policy to the -- a think tank here in Washington, aspeech that I-ended up giving several months l ater. It was tobe a normal day, foreign visitors, several meetings. It turned

~out not _ t o be a normal day at all, of course.0 The horror of 9/11 appens. Take me through where you

were, how you learned about it, and what you did initially.DR. RICE: I was standing at my desk and my executive

assistant came in, and said, you know a plane has hit the WorldTrade Center. And I thought, wha t a strange accid ent. And mymind immediately went to a small plane of some kind. And infact the first reports were that they were -- there was somesort of small plane, or maybe a twin engine plane of some kind.

And I picked up the phone and I called the President, whowas in Florida for an educati on event . And he had just heard.And I said, yes, Mr. Presi dent, a plane has hit the World TradeCenter. And he also said, what a strange accident. And I saidI would get back in touch with him later.

500


2/12

I then went downstairs to my dail y senior st aff meeting, inwhich I can go around and ask all of the senior staff what'sgoing on in their area of respo nsibi lity. And I got about threepeople in, and the executive assistant handed me a note, and itsaid, a second plane has hit the World Trade Center. And Ithought, my God, this is a terrorist attack.

Q You knew right away?DR. RICE: I knew right away, rig ht away, because that

couldn't be coincidence, that two planes had hit the World TradeCenter that morning. And I went into the operat ional part ofthe Situation Room to try and gather the National SecurityCouncil pricipals together. Now that I think about it, it wouldhave been of course the worst possible thing to do, to bringthem all to one place. But at that moment, I thought it wasimportant to talk to everybody. I suddenly remembered ColinPowell was in Peru, not Colombia as I had first feared, a placethat had a lot of problems with terrorism.

And I couldn't reach Don Rumsfeld. And several minuteslater, I realized -- I looked behind me on the TV screen, and aplane had hit the Pentagon . And then there were inco mingreports that there had been a car bomb at the State Department,that there was a large fire on the M all, near the WashingtonMonument, and just trying to sort through the informa tion when aSecret Service agent came and said, "you have to go to thebunker, the Vice President is already there, there may be planesheading for the White House." ~

And I stopped for one mome nt. I called the President, andI said, " Mr . President, here's what's going on. The Pentagonhas been hit." And he said, I'm get tin g ready to come back.He'd already made his way to the airport. And I said, "sir, youcan't come back here, Washington is under attack." And then Ileft for the bunker.

Q Wha t goes on inside of you when one th in g afteranother -- I mean, go back to -- you were told or you actuallysaw the second p lane hit ?

DR. RICE: I saw the pic ture as the plane had just -- thepicture had just come up on television of the plane lodged inthe side of the Pentagon. And no one had told me, I literallyturned and looked at the p icture and saw it.

501


3/12

Q And what about the World Trade Cente r, when the secondplane hit ?

DR. RICE: The second -- the plane I had been told aboutthat.

Q What goes on inside of you? You're the NationalSecurity Advisor of the United States. Did you gasp, did youhave any sort of moment of pause?

DR. RICE: Almost immediately I started trying to do what Icould do, which was to begin to gather people to talk about whatneeded to be done. You just start to react. You don't react somuch to the events as to almost a checklist in your head. I'vetought many simulations, war and crisis simulations, as aprofessor of international politics. I participated in manysimulations when I worked for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon,when I was on the Nationa l Security Council staf f before.

And you at some level know what to do. When I got to thebunker, for instance, the first thing that occurred to me wasthat it was important to get a cable out to all posts around theworld, diplomatic posts around the wor ld, to say the UnitedStates government is still functioning, we have not beendecapitated by this attack. So you just sort of respond.

Q You actually felt the need to make it clear that thegovernment was still operating.

DR. RICE: Yes.Q It was that serious.DR. RICE: It was that serious. Jus t think of sitting in

London or in Paris or in Moscow, for that matter, and looking atthe pictures that mus t have been coming in on their television sas well. I thought to myself, we need to let everybody knowthat we're still up and running.

Q Were you scared?DR. RICE: I don't remember a sense of fear, either

personal or cosmic. I was really more concerned to do thethings that we needed to do at that moment.

502


4/12

Q You had talked to the President already a couple oftimes this morning. Give some sense of what his mood was like,what his words were lik e, his command of tha t mom ent.

DR. RICE: I remember the President as being almost matterof fact. The first call, in which he expressed disbelief thatsomething like this had happened, a weird accident -- which ishow we both thought about the first plane -- was of course a bitof consternation. But when I talked to him the second time, andhe said he was headed back, and we said, no, you can't comeback, already there was a sense of determination. He was incharge of it, he needed to know what was happening. And by thetime I, got to the bunker -- and he stayed on an open line withthe Vice President throughout this entire period -- it was veryclear that he, too, was just thinking about what needed to getdone.

Q It's well documented by now that you and others on thenational security team-were no stranger to the general threatposed by terror groups, specifically al Qaeda, and that thisadministration, the new administr ation, was preparing toconfront that threat. When it was clear that this wasterrorism, and an attack against the United States, did you havea sense of, oh, dear God, I know who and what this is?

DR. RICE: It was not very long before I think anyone whoknew the MO of al Qaeda had exactly the tho ught, this is alQaeda. It _smelled like al Qaeda, it felt like al Qaeda -- thekind of grandiose charater of i-t, the attenti on gettingcharacter of it. I think we knew pretty early on. And ofcourse a little bit later on in the day, George Tenet, the CIADirector, confirmed that the" CIA's assesment was that it was alQaeda. But standing in the bunker only a few min ute s after Ihad gotten there, I was pretty clear in my own min d that it wasal Qaeda.

Q Did you have a sinking feeling, saying to yourself,here I was, I was putting together a plan of action to take thisthreat on, and it was just, just too late?

DR. RICE: Wel l, of course you thin k, we should have got tenthem before they got us. But the fact of the matter is thateverything that we were looking at, and frankly that the Clintonadministration had looked at was a three to five year plan to.try to bring down al Qaeda.

503


5/12


6/12

sense, I'm sure th at in another sense it mus t have seemed to himthat he had no choice but to do that.

Q Talk a little bit about in the mid st of making thedecisions and taking the actions that you and others had to doto protect the country, when did you take t im e out for -- whendid Dr. Rice take time out for Condi Rice, and to absorb this,to talk to family, to let people know you were okay?

DR. RICE: Well, in fact I stopped for one moment on theway to the bunker to call my aunt and uncle in Birmingham, andto say, I'm fine, tell everybody I'm all right. We're a veryclose knit family, and I knew that there would be panic amongthe Rays and the Rices. And so I wanted them to know that I wasall right.

I didn't think about anything personal again for quite along time. In fact it was that Thursday nigh t -- this of coursehappened on a"Tuesday -- it was Thursday night when I got home,about midnight, and I turned on the television for the firsttime. I had not watched television during that entire period,we had been too busy. I turned on the television, and the Britswere playing the American national anthem at Buckingham Palace.I finally let go and broke down. But before that I didn't havethe time. - ~

Q It all hit you then.DR. RICE: It did, it all hifme, the enormity of it, what

the country had gone throug h. And there was something in thatnational anthern being played in Britain that said that asdifficult as it was, we were not alone.

Q What does it take for someone who is in leadership todeal with this kind of horror? I mean, what do you need tohave,.what's the equipment, what are the skills? Was your faith-- what role did that play? I mean, how did you bring all ofthat to the next hours and days?

DR. RICE: The first thing that you have to have is anability to think clearl y, even under the most di ff ic ul tcircumstances. And I have just enormous admiration for thePresident's ability to get to the essence of everything. Andthat was -one of the thin gs that attrac ted me to him as candidateBush, all the way back when I first signed on with him.

505


7/12

And as President Bush, that ability to get to the essenceof what we needed to do, the clarity, the moral clarity aboutwhat had happened to us I think served him really wel l, andsteadied all of us. Everybody talked about how experienced thisteam _ _ this national security team was. We'd all been in thesepositions before. But it was the President who stead ied thisteam, not the other way around.

It was also the case that for those of us who are people offaith, it was a time to draw on that f aith . I can remember justpraying every day, maybe several times a day, to be steady, tohave my feet walk in a path that was the Lord's not my own. Idid rely on family and friends who would just call in to say, Ihope you're doing okay. They didn't want to talk about thepolicy, they didn't want to know what was going on. They justwanted to know that I was okay, and that was important, too.

Finally, you have to have great fa ith in this country. Andevery moment that we went through, from September llth and inthe following days, just affirmed and af firmed the strength ofthis democracy. And that was rea lly heartening.

Q Can you tell me a little bit about the sort "of earlyportraits in time, when the earliest stages of planning a U.S.and al li ed response to this horror -- what those interactionswith the President and others on the nat ion al security team werelike, what was driving you, what were the pri ori tie s, wha t wastalked and thought about most.

DR. RICE: What was talke d and thought about most in thefirst day or so was rea lly trying to get the country back ontrack. There was a time when the national security team, alongwith the economic team and w ith several people from the domesticside were worrying about when could we reopen a irpo rts , whencould we reopen Reagan airport. We had to go through a ratherhurried excercise to try to do what we could to button up thecountry.

This country had not been under attack -- its territory hadnot been under attack for almost 200 years. And to think thatyou had to worry about the physical territory of the Un ite dStates, how could you secure airports, how could you securenuclear power plants, those issues were also foremost.

So on one track we were worrying about the physicalsecurity of the United States . On the other track, we were

506


8/12

preparing to try to take out al Qaeda and ultimately theTaliban.

Q In an accelr ated way.DR. RICE: In an accelera ted way. The fact is that many of

the things that we ended up doing we would have done over alonger period of time. But you could not imagine getting basesin Uzbekistan or running the kinds of operations that we ran inCentral Asia prior to the events of 9/11. But in an accelratedway, yes, to try to bring al Qaeda down as fast as possible.

Q That morning everything changed. This administrationchanged, the presidency changed, and a lot of people say thatthis President himself evolved or changed. Describe how any ofthose things changed in your mind.

DR. RICE: Well, of course the American view of itself andits own vulnerability changed immediately. We had beenprotected by shores, by great oceans. We had not had to worryabout an attack on the homeland in a long, long time. We got asense that our vulnerabil ity was linked to our very openness and.our generosity and our willigness to have people here. Ourborders were not that secure. I mean, our concept of our ownvulnerability clearly changed.

Q In a posi tiv e way, new opportunities started toappear. One of the most important and interesting conversationsthat I had on that first day was with President Puti-a of Russia,who called to say that he knew that we were inreasing thedefense condition of the American armed forces, we were changingtheir defense con dit ion . The Russians can see those things.And he said, we have a military excercise underway, and we'regoing to stand down so there's no confusion.

Well, for an old Soviet specialist like myself, who hadworried about the spiral of alerts between American and Sovietforces, as we changed our defense condition, they would changetheirs, and we would go up this ladde r, this was a tremendousbreakthrough. And the U.S.-Russian relationship has beenstrengthened by the joint war on terror, as have relationshipsand intel ligence relationships around the world.

In personal terms, this President has simply been more ofwhat he is. He is a determined, resolute person who thinks andacts from a deep inner well of moral belie f and moral clar ity.

507


9/12


10/12

So I would hope that people would take the t ime toremember, but that they would also refl ect on what an amazingcountry this is, and the responsibilit y that each and every oneof us has to mak e it even more so through our devot ion to ourideals, to our devotion to our fellow Americans and to our rolein the world, which is unlik e any other country in the hist oryof the world.

Non-Responsive Material

509


11/12

Non-Responsive M aterialQ One last question on September llt h. It' s been

written that no where in the Constitution is the word, "nation"actually used. And a lot of people who have chr onic led thecivil war made the case that it took the bloodshed of those fourhorrific years of war to really give birth to the concept of anation. Warts and all, we were still a nation. As you reflecton September llth, has there been a similar rebirth?

DR. RICE: There has been a rebirth of America as a nation.We are a complicated place. And it's-hard for people who arenot Americans -- I think sometimes -- to understand what it islike to truly be a mu lt i- et hi c society, where Afri can Americansor Mexican Americans or German Americans or Italian Americansare all proud of their heritage, and want to keep part of thatheritage, but have a common purpose and a common place in beingAmerican.

And it 's not because we're all of the same blood, it'sbecause we are all a part of a common ideal. And sometimesbecause we are sometimes a little bit loud in how we debate it,and we have so many different ideas, people get the wrong view,that that means that we aren't all of a common plac~e and acommon ideal.

When something like September llth happens, it reminds youthat we really are. I've had so many people say to me -- youngkids to elderly people -- I've never fel t so Americ an as thatday. And that is something that maybe most of the world needsto -- although the rest of the world needs to understand thatthis was a horrific experience, but it was also a uni fy ingexperience. It's now our obligation and our cha lle nge as acountry to use this horrific , unifiying experience to thebetterment of the country. The President has call ed on peopleto find ways to serve, to tutor a chi ld, to help an elderlyperson, to serve something greater than you rsel f. Because wh atAmerica has always been about is serving something greate r thanyourself.

It's also a time when as Americans we have to refl ec t onthe fact that we are in a special pos ition in history in termsof our efreat power and influence in the worl d. And we have tomake the world safer. We have to deal wit h the threats that arebefore us. This administration, this President, t his Americ awill have shirked its responsibility to history if we do not

510


12/12

deal with the threats before us and make the world safer. Butwe will also have shirked the responsibility if we don't makethe world be tt er . And this President is determined to leaveoffice and to leave this presidency having left the world saferand better , more democ ratic and more stable.

Q Dr. Rice, thank you.DR. RICE: Thank you.END 11:48 A.M. EOT

5 1 1