Kfl~

;•"?)

OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT

WASHINGTON

CLOSED SESSION MATERIAL

June 3, 2003

Daniel Marcus, General Counsel

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States
301 Seventh Street SW
Room 5125
Washington, D.C. 20407

Dear Mr. Marcus:

RE: Commission's OVP Document Request No. 1 Dated May 20, 2003,
Relating to Title VI of Public Law 107-306

As a matter of comity between the executive and legislative branches, enclosed are Vice
Presidential executive materials (pages numbered 000001 through 000565) which may be
responsive to the Commission's request of May 20, 2003 entitled "OVP Document Request No. 1."

The enclosed materials, and all materials that are subsequently furnished (whether by delivery or by
making them available), are furnished with due regard for the constitutional separation of powers
and reserving all legal authorities and privileges that may apply, including with respect to other
governmental entities or private parties. All materials are submitted to the Commission in
confidence and as in closed session. Please ensure that the Committee protects the materials and
their contents from unauthorized disclosure and from use for any purpose other than the legislative
purpose for which the Commission issued the document request.

Please direct further requests, if any, for Vice Presidential executive materials to me by facsimile
transmission at (202) 456-6429.

Sincerely,

David S. Addington
Counsel to the Vice President
VP's Interview with Jim Lehrer
10/12/01

JIM LEHRER: Now, to our interview with VICE PRESIDENT DICK

Cheney. I spoke with him this afternoon in his office at the Old
Executive Office Building next to the White House.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Vice President, welcome.

DICK CHENEY: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Have there been any developments today concerning

the FBI's warning - terrorist warnings of yesterday?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: We've got continued reporting that

really led us to believe that the threat level had gone up -
that is to say it's fairly precise in terms of time, although
not location or anything like that. And all of that's obviously
of concern. We've had this ongoing disclosure now of anthrax
problems, now extending to NBC in New York, and nobody's made a
direct link yet but at this stage you have to be concerned about
that sort of thing, the possibility. Are they related? We don't
know. We don't have enough evidence to be able to pin down that
kind of connection. But, on the other hand, these kinds of
activities that we saw in Florida, now perhaps in New York, we
have to be suspicious.

JIM LEHRER: Do the anthrax things fit the warning that came out
yesterday?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Not that precise, Jim. What we_ do
know - we know a number of things - we know that Osama bin Laden
and the al-Qaida Organization clearly have already launched an
attack that killed thousands of Americans. We know that for
years he's been the source of terrorist attacks against the
United States overseas, our embassies in East Africa in '98 —
the USS Cole last year probably in Yemen We know that he has
over the years tried to acquire weapons of mass destruction,
both biological and chemical weapons. We know that he's trained
people in his camps in Afghanistan, for example; we have copies
of the manuals that they've actually used to train people with
respect to how to deploy and use these kinds of substances. So,
you start to piece it altogether. Again, we have not completed
the investigation and maybe it's coincidence, but I must say I'm
a skeptic.

JIM LEHRER: A skeptic.

000008
 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: I think the only responsible thing
for us to do is proceed on the basis that it could be lengthy.
And obviously that means you've got to spend time as well, as
we've known now for some time, focusing on other types of
attacks besides the one that we experienced on September 11.

JIM LEHRER: These warnings that - the information - the

intelligence information that you all got that resulted in this
warning - did it -- was it of a magnitude that would be
comparable to September 11? Is it that kind of thing that you
think that we may be facing and other things similar to that in
magnitude? I don't mean more airplanes flying into buildings or
anything --

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Sometimes it actually will take that

form; it will reference what happened on September 11 -- talk
about another event. It may not be any more precise than that.
But the point is that we've tried to make to everybody - the

events of September llth marked a watershed in American history

- it is a time when the U.S. homeland now is open to attack in
ways that we've only speculated about before. And we know that

j there are threats out there. We know there's an organization

with a lot of well-trained people in it, a lot of financing,
cells all over the world. And there's no reason for us to
operate on the ption that that was a one-off event and it's
never going to n again. In fact, we have to assume it will
happen again, a at's the only sane way for us to proceed.

JIM LEHRER: Do ow for a fact that there are al-Qaida agents

still at large in the United States?

VICE PRESIDENT ICK CHENEY: We're doing everything we can to

wrap them up as kly as possible, but I think the only safe
assumption is t here may well be others here. There's been
speculation, fo mple, that one of the individuals - one of
the crews that put on the airplanes only had four men on it
instead of five We think we may have that individual in custody
but we don't know for sure. It's one of the individuals who was
arrested up in Minnesota earlier this year in August. And so
it's reasonable to expect - we had some of those hijackers who
were involved in the U.S. -- have been here over a two or three
year period of time, traveled back and forth freely. Again, the
only safe assumption for us is to proceed on the basis that
there are probably other cells here in the U.S. who have planned
or trained to carry out various kinds of operations, and we need

000009
 to do everything we can to wrap them up That's exactly what we
^ are doing, especially with the FBI and all of the efforts that
I are underway there now.

JIM LEHRER: Is there any way - I realize that these threats are
not specific - but is there any way for you to share with us the
range of the possibilities? We know what they've already done.
We know now that at least there's a possibility of anthrax. What
else is there in-between those two?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: You know it varies in terms of the

locale. Sometimes the threats involve U.S. forces deployed
overseas or Americans overseas, or friends and allies of the
k United States. I mean there has been a pattern of terrorist
attacks over the years. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 - I
mean, there's a long history here to look at. An awful lot of
the reporting turns out to be false. Lots of times we disrupt
their organizations enough so that we're able to preempt or head
off or destroy their ability to move forward on these
operations, so a lot of operations have in fact been
forestalled. But the scope of it is greater than before, and we
know for a fact - especially given the attacks of September llth
- that they have the capacity to inflict great damage on the
United States. And so we are in fact at war.
)
—' JIM LEHRER: As you know, several of the questions last night for
the President at the news conference had to do, okay, we've
heard the warning. We've heard about the threats. Now what
should the average American do about them now? Now, for
instance, in the context of today's news - a new development --
the fourth case of confirmed anthrax - there's all kinds of
people who say, oh, don't open your mail; be careful when you
open your mail. If you see powder somewhere -- what would you
advise the American people to do specifically about the anthrax
threat?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: If I received a letter that I didn't

know where it came from, didn't recognize the sender, it wasn't
sort of part of my regular mail flow -- bills and those kinds of
things - I'd be suspicious of it. I'd want to have it checked.

JIM LEHRER: Everybody should do that?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Well, I think anybody who has a

E^ reason to be suspicious of a package or a letter that they're
receiving ought to contact their local law enforcement
•; officials, and it's the responsible thing to do.
.J
000010
JIM LEHRER: What else?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Well, I think it's partly a question

of - there's several things that need to happen. We need to
improve our - some of our law enforcement procedures; we've got
legislation pending before the Congress, for example; it's
important we get that through. Every day that goes by when we
don't have all the tools we think we need to find out who these
people are and to run them to ground is one more day when we
could conceivably suffer the consequences of undue delay. So
call your Congressman and Senator, tell them that's important
legislation, you'd like to see it passed. We need to be more
alert just as a society, not take for granted that everything's
okay, but when you see something out of the ordinary, you see
something unusual, to go ahead and report it to the authorities;
let them check it out. We just need to be more sensitive that
there are in fact people in our midst who wish us ill and when
we see something that doesn't quite fit and doesn't make sense,
a candidate at a flight school who only wants to learn how to
steer the aircraft, not land it, that's probably something that
we ought to be suspicious of.

JIM LEHRER: That's one part of the warning -- the alertness -

which is to be looking for suspicious activity.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: And that's of course the warnings

especially go to local law enforcement officers and our field
officers with the FBI, so that they're on an extra state of
alert.

JIM LEHRER: Sure. But much of the questioning last night had to
do with what the American should do to protect him or herself
from the possibility of a terrorist attack which the government
of the United States now says is likely in the next several
days.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: We put out as much information as we

can. Obviously, if we knew exactly what it was going to be and
where it was going to occur and when it was going to occur, we'd
go forestall that. A lot of what needs to be done needs to be
done collectively as a society. As individuals it's difficult
for us to guard against for example something like happened at
the World Trade Center. So we need to be cognizant of the fact
that we do have to change our way of doing things. We're
probably going to have to be stiffer on immigration and do a
better job for example managing the INS. We've got to be more

OOOOli
aggressive in terms of how we prepare ourselves to deal with
these kinds of contingencies. We've got to be willing to
tolerate a procedure that puts a 40-block area around the
Capitol Building that we're not going to allow trucks in to for
the time being. We've got to be able to accommodate Pennsylvania
Avenue being closed out here in front of the White House.
There's good reason why it's closed. It was closed because of
the car bomb threat, and it ought to stay closed. And you know
we had a big debate in this town about who's going to open up
Pennsylvania Avenue. Well, Pennsylvania Avenue ought to stay
closed because it does in fact, if somebody were to detonate a
truck bomb in front of the White House, it would probably level
the White House, and that is unacceptable.

JIM LEHRER: What about the mixed messages problem? We had a

couple of days ago the Centers for Disease Control said to the
average American don't worry about anthrax and don't stockpile
antibiotics, don't go get a gas mask or whatever. Within an hour
the State Department issued an order to every embassy, every
U.S. embassy in the world, to stockpile antibiotics, and then we
find out that every member of Congress has a gas mask

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Well, I'm not sure I know where the
gas mask --

JIM LEHRER: No, no, no. This is not related - not related
definitely to this - but they've been given gas masks in the
past. Would you have some sympathy for the guy -

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Sure.

JIM LEHRER: - - i n - you know, in Wyoming, who's saying what's

going on here?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: That's right. It's bound to be a

confusing time for people. We try to do everything we can to
have one coherent message out there. We have different
departments and agencies with different responsibilities. The
State Department clearly has to worry about embassies overseas.
The threat traditionally has been greater for our embassies
overseas than it has been here at home. Now that may have
changed as of September 11, but an awful lot of the terrorist
attacks that have occurred in the past have been aimed at
embassies because they're more vulnerable; it's out there as a
symbol of America in East Africa, for example, and a relatively
easy target. So they've got obligations and responsibilities to
do that. By the same token I think what the CDC has tried to do

000012.
 and needs to do is we need to keep all of this in perspective in
terms of the kind of problem we're having to deal with here, and
' the terrorist wins if they shut down the society, just as much
as they would win if they launched another major attack. So
we're looking for balance and reasonableness. And I know it's
difficult -- I've talked to my own family - what should they be
worried about, how should they operate? We find ourselves under
a much higher level of security now than ever before. It's
necessary, and we have to adapt to that but the - again, all I
can ask for people is to use their good judgment - their good
sense -- work together and - but be alert.

JIM LEHRER: There was a mixed message question last night, in

. fact, to the President about you. The question goes like this:
* Hey, you tell us to go about our business and yet the Vice
President of the United States is in a secure location and out
of public sight for four days. Does that bother you?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: No, I think it's a reasonable

precaution. It's something that we have dealt with in the past
by, for example, when there was a State of the Union speech -
the President, the Vice President, the Speaker, the President
Pro-Tern of the Senate all in the Capitol -- we always had one
x cabinet member who was in the line of succession absent. Now
| we've reached the point where, especially with Washington
targeted as it was on September 11, with the possibility that
the White House or the Capitol or other facilities here could be
targeted in a terrorist attack - that generally it's not a good
practice for the President and I to spend a lot of time
together. We had already adopted before September 11 a practice
that we never flew together; after the campaign we stopped that.
I've never been on Air Force One since he was sworn in as
President. Now we also now generally avoid large public
gatherings here in Washington, the two of us together; that
becomes an enticing target, if you will, for the terrorists, and
that it's important from the standpoint of our responsibility to
maintain the continuity of government to always see to it that
nobody - no adversary or enemy would have the capacity of, in
effect, decapitating the federal government by taking out the
President and the Vice President and other senior management,
senior leadership. So frequently we will separate. Now, I'm here
this afternoon. The President is headed for Camp David. He'll be
up there this weekend; I'll be in Washington. That's a fairly
easy one to work out. Next week he'll be in the Far East and
^ I'll be in Washington. It doesn't mean that we never get
together.

000013
 JIM LEHRER: Sure.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: And when I'm gone, I'm very much in
touch, as he is. Tomorrow we'll have a National Security Council
meeting. I'll be in the room with the Secretary of State,
Secretary of Defense. The President will be out at Camp David.
We'll be all tied together with video conferencing. We have that
capacity; there's no reason not to use it, but it's just
prudence, if you will, at this stage for us, and minimize the
extent to which we're out traveling around, attending events, or
always in the same building.

JIM LEHRER: Any sympathy for somebody who would say, hey, wait a
minute, the government cannot protect the President of the
United States and the Vice President of the United States at the
same time, and the Vice President has to go someplace, to a
hiding place somewhere?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Well, we have secure facilities that

have been developed over the years for good and sufficient
reasons; they come in handy now at a time like this. But the
reality is, Jim, that we lost more people in the Pentagon on
September 11 than we had killed in action in the Gulf War, and
it happened right here in Washington D.C., in the Pentagon, and
3 the home, the central command post of our Department of Defense.
We are vulnerable as a society to people who want to commit
suicide during the course of trying to launch that kind of
terrorist attack, and the prudent thing for us to do is to take
note of that and conduct ourselves accordingly, so that means
that the President and I don't spend as much time together as we
did in the past. We're in touch all the-time; we talk all the
time. We did have an NSC meeting together this morning where we
were together, so it's not an absolute prohibition; it's just -
it's flexible - and from time to time we find it necessary to
separate. And I think that's still a wise thing to do

JIM LEHRER: Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network - I was
struck and others were too that within hours after the attacks
on September 11 there were people in the government -- recent
officials of the government coming on television programs like
ours and saying, oh, yeah, that's Osama bin Laden; he has a
network - a terrorist network -- called al-Qaida - he's got
thousands of people all over the world in fifty or sixty
countries; they all hate the United States, and are dedicated to
our destruction. The question is still hanging out there: Why in
the world didn't we do something about it before September llth?

000014
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Well, I think the Clinton
Administration tried; they weren't successful obviously. But
there had been some efforts previously. To that we saw the
Cruise missile attack after the bombing of the - the embassies
in East Africa two years ago, but clearly they never were
successful in prosecuting this to the point where they
eliminated Osama bin Laden and his organization. We're going to
change that.

JIM LEHRER: But do you agree it was kind of common knowledge

that this guy was there and he had these people all over the
world and all that - and nothing was happening to try to get rid
- I don't mean just get Osama bin Laden but his whole network
all over the world, fifty/sixty countries --

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Again, it's a question of

priorities, I suppose. I can't -- I wasn't here during those
years in terms of when those decisions were made with respect to
Osama bin Laden and how aggressively to go after him. It's also
fair to say that up till that time, up until September 11, there
had never been attack by Osama bin Laden -- as far as we know -
that had cost thousands of American lives here at home. So I'm
not trying to criticize the prior administration.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The fact that he's been there, that
he's been a terrorist engaged in terrorist activities, that he
has, in fact, cost us lives overseas -- all of that was known
for some considerable period of time.

JIM LEHRER: Based on all your experience in government and your

knowledge that you have, that you got before when you were in
government and you've had since you've been Vice President of
the United States, were you personally surprised that something
like that could happen on September 11?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: I was. I think like everybody - I —

when I was first saw - was told that a plane had struck the
World Trade Center and turned on the television - watched for a
few minutes and saw the second plane hit - and it was when the
second plane hit, that it really registered this is a terrorist
attack; it's got to be - it's not an accident - it's a
coordinated attack. But I think everybody was surprised by it. I
mean, I don't find that unusual at all.

JIM LEHRER: Was it because we had a kind of sense of

000015
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Well, I think the Clinton
Administration tried; they weren't successful obviously. But
there had been some efforts previously. To that we saw the
Cruise missile attack after the bombing of the - the embassies
in East Africa two years ago, but clearly they never were
successful in prosecuting this to the point where they
eliminated Osama bin Laden and his organization. We're going to
change that.

JIM LEHRER: But do you agree it was kind of common knowledge

that this guy was there and he had these people all over the
world and all that - and nothing was happening to try to get rid
- I don't mean just get Osama bin Laden but his whole network
all over the world, fifty/sixty countries --

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Again, it's a question of

priorities, I suppose. I can't -- I wasnM; here during those
years in terms of when those decisions were made with respect to
Osama bin Laden and how aggressively to go after him. It's also
fair to say that up till that time, up until September 11, there
had never been attack by Osama bin Laden -- as far as we know -
that had cost thousands of American lives here at home. So I'm
not trying to criticize the prior administration.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The fact that he's been there, that
he's been a terrorist engaged in terrorist activities, that he
has, in fact, cost us lives overseas -- all of that was known
for some considerable period of time.

JIM LEHRER: Based on all your experience in government and your

knowledge that you have, that you got before when you were in
government and you've had since you've been Vice President of
the United States, were you personally surprised that something
like that could happen on September 11?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: I was. I think like everybody - I --

when I was first saw - was told that a plane had struck the
World Trade Center and turned on the television - watched for a
few minutes and saw the second plane hit - and it was when the
second plane hit, that it really registered this is a terrorist
attack; it's got to be - it's not an accident - it's a
coordinated attack. But I think everybody was surprised by it. I
mean, I don't find that unusual at all.

JIM LEHRER: Was it because we had a kind of sense of

000015
invulnerability in our country that we're maybe the most
powerful country in the world and nobody would ever attack us on
our home ground - did we all kind of collectively think that,
Mr. Vice President?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: I think we did. I think we — we had

150 years of experience. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
in World War II, it was a territory then, it wasn't a state, but
the fact is I thought like most Americans that we were
relatively invulnerable. There was a thing out here called
terrorism, and asymmetric warfare and so forth that I've looked
at, spoke about - others had as well too -- but war was
something that took place overseas across the ocean. We might
send 500,000 troops to the Gulf to liberate Kuwait or to defend
Europe or Korea or Vietnam or conduct operations in Somalia or
elsewhere. But we were behind our oceans, behind the Pacific and
the Atlantic, and there wasn't really anybody who threatened us,
other than the Cold War, and there we dealt with that through
deterrence and arms controls treaties and so forth. War had
become so horrific when we thought about it in terms of nuclear
terms that it didn't seem like it was a very realistic prospect.
Now we're faced with a very different situation where we have
people who don't have anything to defend. I mean you talk about
trying to deter Osama bin Laden - how? What is it that he cares
about, other than his own life? He doesn't have any territory to
defend. So deterrence doesn't work in a traditional sense. He is
able to smuggle material, people, weapons into the United
States, or simply send people in to use our own systems, turn
our own systems against us, our airliners against our World
Trade Center -- and do enormous damage -- if you can get a few
people who are willing to commit suicide during the course of
that enterprise. So it's a very different kind of conflict in
the 21st century than what we got used to dealing with in the
20th century. And we all have to change, adjust and adapt to
that. We've got to make the U.S. a harder target; it's got to be
tougher to come after us and to attack us here at home than it's
ever been before. That's Tom Ridge's job; he's up and running --
and working very aggressively on that. That means we've got to
aggressively go after the terrorists overseas because in the end
the best defense is a good offense. And that's exactly what
we're doing in Afghanistan -- going after not only Osama bin
Laden and al-Qaida - his network that's headquartered there, but
also the country, the government, in effect, in this case the
Taliban that hosted and provided the sustenance and support for
him.

JIM LEHRER: Thus far, has the military action in Afghanistan

9 000016
against Osama bin Laden's network and the Taliban, has it had a
measurable effect, do you think, in terms of their ability to
function both as a terrorist network and a supporting of a
terrorist network?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: I think it has. I think the reports

we're getting back show that we're clearly having a significant
impact on the Taliban. There are reports now of defections, of
areas of Afghanistan that are pulling away from the central
Taliban government. We've clearly done significant damage to
Taliban military capabilities - what aircraft they had -- and
the airfields have all been shut down, that sort of thing. We
have done a lot of damage to training camps that Osama bin Laden
operated. They probably were empty or didn't have very many
people in them at the time that we hit them, but he won't be
able to use them again for the purposes of training terrorists
from around the world. We.'ll continue aggressively, for example,
on the financial front. I think we've had a significant impact
there. We've got over $40 million now that we've been able to
freeze in terms of assets. I think in the intelligence area our
work as well with the - the tribes - the Taliban opposition, if
you will, the Northern Alliance and some of the other groups
inside Afghanistan all possess great potential both in terms of
the damage they can do to the Taliban but also the damage they
can do to Osama bin Laden, because he is, in effect, has found a
sanctuary with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and has a number of
fighters that he's contributed to the Taliban. In another sense
- and a phrase that I thought the other day was very
descriptive, what we had in Afghanistan isn't state-supported
terrorism - we had a terrorist-supported state, a terrorist who
came in - Osama bin Laden - with lots of money, maybe $100
million to the Taliban directly, with training, with weapons,
with troops to supplement their own forces with, and in effect
took over a big part of Afghanistan, so everything we do to take
down that organization, to reduce their capability to provide
him sanctuary, weakens him, makes him more vulnerable, and I
think ultimately will lead to his demise.

JIM LEHRER: Help me on the decision making process that's going

on now within the government. The President made the decision on
Friday, that Friday to launch the air strikes. Was that a
decision that went like, all right, Secretary Rumsfeld and the
military, you go do air strikes, and then come back and tell us
what's happening every day, or whatever, or is a new decision
made every day by the President - okay, let's continue another
day -- How is that working?

000017
10
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: We had the events of September.11,
and we began almost immediately to respond - diplomatically you
can see the efforts almost immediately - as people began to line
up and working through State, they worked through diplomatic
strategy - the President spent a lot of time on it himself,
calling people, meeting with foreign leaders and so forth, so
that piece was up and running. We had the intelligence piece of
it up and running fairly quickly. Afghanistan is a country we
know a fair amount about from an intelligence perspective; we've
got a lot of people who spent time there back in the 80's. So
there is a residue of capability there as well too. So that was
up and running fairly early on, although we don't talk about a
lot of the details. The financial efforts were cranked up
through the Treasury Department, again, the President directing
each of these. The military side, it takes longer because you
have got to deploy forces and we didn't have that many forces
immediately on the scene, but we knew military action was likely
to be required, so early on the President directed the Secretary
to begin deploying forces to the region. We had General Franks,
the commander in chief who runs that part of the world, who came
in and met with the President and myself and a few others and
began to develop plans, what kinds of activities -- to look at
Afghanistan as a target, figure out what you'd want to do and
how you'd want to do it. We began to coordinate between the
intel people and the military people in terms of deflecting
targets and that sort of thing - the actual onset of military
actions, the time set by the President - he makes those
decisions -- he'd signed off on the campaign plan, they'd
reviewed their targeting strategy with him and what they were
going to go after and when they were going to go after it -- all
of that's personally signed up to by the President and then
they'll take that campaign and go execute it -- but staying very
close. He receives reports at least twice of a day on the status
of those activities, and the thing to emphasize is the campaign
is all of this. It is not just military. A lot of people said
the war didn't start till you started bombing Afghanistan. No,
it started back here on about September 12.

JIM LEHRER: But did he sign off on a master plan, in other

words, go, this phase one, the bombing, and there's another
phase, which has been talked about, not in specific terms but
there's going to be -- there is probably going to be - if it
hasn't already begun - some stuff on the ground - was it all of
a piece or does he say, here's phase one, the bombing - and I
will tell you when we start phase two, whatever? What's the
process?

000018
11
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Well, the capabilities are all
pretty much signed up to in advance. I mean, you know you're
going to have an intelligence piece; you know you're going to
have a military piece that's probably going to involve air,
maybe some special ops, so called boots on the ground, et
cetera. But the pieces are interrelated in the sense of what you
do for example, with respect to your intelligence collection may
inform your targeting, in turn - maybe go after targeting and
hit your targets, how they move and shift, what the opposition
is doing on the ground can generate new targets, so there's a
process -- it's a dynamic process, and it's not as though you
sit down on day one and you know what you're going to be doing
on day thirty-one.

JIM LEHRER: Got it.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: But you know you're going to work
these tracks and they are interrelated - or top level -
opportunity --

JIM LEHRER: I think what I'm getting at is who's making those -

is the President making decisions every day, every two days on -

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Every day

JIM LEHRER: Every day. Does it involve specifics of what we're

doing?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Every day he's involved in - yeah --

I'd say just about every day signing up to various pieces of it,
authorizing various activities, sometimes diplomatic, send
General Powell out to Pakistan and India - diplomacy and
military overlay -- signs up to a deployment order in terms of
the following forces are authorized -- the Secretary is
authorized to deploy those to the region and turn them over --
In terms of the strike packages and so forth he personally has
signed off on the overall approach on what the priorities ought
to be and they come in and brief and say, you know, this is what
we went after, we went after 31 targets; we're confident we've
destroyed 17 of those - partial damage to the others, we'll go
back and restrike those. He gets a daily assessment from the
Secretary as to how those operations are going.

JIM LEHRER: How involved have you been in all of this?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: I've been very involved; I've been

12 000019
in virtually all of those meetings, a regular participant in not
only NSC meetings but what we call principals meeting -
principals -- everybody but the President - all your senior NSC
decision makers. Lots of times we'll have a pre-meeting, if you
will, and key up issues, work issues before we're ready to take
something to him for a decision. Those meetings we always have
an NSC meeting just about every morning and a principals meeting
just about every evening at the end of the day to wrap things
up, lots of meetings in-between. Participation on my part with
the President when he meets with a lot of foreign leaders that
come in - other cases I have my own private separate meetings
with him. 1 was just lunching - (gap in phone feed) --

JIM LEHRER: How did you - when you were in your secure location,
how did you involve yourself?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: A day there was just about a day
here in the sense that I'd begin every day with my intelligence
briefs, my CIA briefer, sometimes a team would come to that
location and give me the same brief I got every day at the
residence here before I come in and that he gets every morning
in the Oval Office. And then I'd tee up the session with my
chief of staff, who was with me at this location, and he's been
working with these committees - he's a member - and then we'd go
to the videoconference on the NSC sessions.

JIM LEHRER: What's that like?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: You've got a TV set -- a big screen

that's divided up into at least four segments so you've got
State, Justice, CIA, Defense tied in over at the situation at
the White House and from my secure location, and it's all real
time video - good, high quality video - where you have a
conversation; the only difference is the participants aren't
necessarily all around the same table; that's the way we
oftentimes do the evening meeting at 6 o'clock is through these
- the secure video conference hookup, and so then a series of
meetings like that during the day. The other day George
Robertson was in town; the NATO Secretary-General, old friend; I
had a session with him; he was in the Sit Room and I was at the
secure location; we were hooked up by videoconference. That was
right after he sat in the Oval Office and talked to the
President.

JIM LEHRER: Communications is working out. The reason, of

course, this is relevant -as you know, Mr. Vice President,
during the presidential campaign even then Governor Bush's own

is 000020
supporters said, well, the Governor does not have that much
experience in defense, national security area, but don't worry
about it, Cheney is going to be there right by his side the
whole time and a lot of people - you weren't there - should we
not be concerned?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: I was there but by telephone and

video conferencing. But the President doesn't need me. He has
got a great team of advisers there; he has old pros like
Rumsfeld and Powell; Condi Rice has been around a good deal on
the NSC staff and on the Joint Staff - I mean it's a skilled
crew and lots of times - you know Don may be off in the Gulf or
Pakistan and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz is there, and Colin is
off traveling to Pakistan and India next week; he'll be
represented at the table by Rich Armitage, his deputy; so it's a
good team all the way around - Steve Adley, for example, the
deputy NSC adviser, is a skilled a hand as you're going to find
anyplace, and most of these people know more than I do about
this stuff anyway, so my role is to function as an adviser,
somebody who's been through some of these things before, but I'm
just one more voice at the table and whether I am there or not
there, he's still very, very - but I am there through the
wonders of modern telecommunications.

JIM LEHRER: Finally, to return to the alert, is it going to be -

is there going to come a time when it will be over, in other
words like the air raid warnings in World War II - an all clear
will be sounded and this particular alert that's in effect now
as you and I are speaking?

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: It's possible for individual short

term pieces, but I'm reluctant to say to the country or to the
American people that a week from now or a month from now you're
going to be able to totally relax, no more problems, because I
think it's going to take a long time. I think we're going to
have to get a lot tougher in terms of how we deal with some of
these problems in terms of guaranteeing that we are protected
here at home; we're going to have to achieve success overseas
against the terrorists themselves as well as the states that
support terrorists, and I simply can't say to everybody, you
know, this is a war like the Gulf War, it'll be over as soon as
we run Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, and then come home we'll
have a great parade and everything will be hunky dory. No, this
is going to last for a long time. We are vulnerable as a society
to these people who wish us ill and are willing to die in the
effort, and so we're all going to have to make some changes and
possibly accept some limitations we'd rather not accept, but

14 000021
it's necessary unfortunately in the time we live in.

JIM LEHRER: But on this specific alert, it's very unlikely that
on say Monday morning, Tuesday morning, a week from Thursday,
the FBI will say, the threat, this immediate threat has
lessened, or anything - there will be no further communication -

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: It's possible; it's possible that

we'll take that extra step. It's possible for example that we
may be able to -- because there are ongoing efforts here at home
as well - lots of times to wrap up the people we think are in
fact planning these kinds of activities that happened before. We
headed off the bombing of LA Airport here a couple of years ago
- attacks -- so that there are a number of success stories out
there, and if we're successful in dealing with what we believe
was the threat, then I think the public will be --

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Vice President, thank you very much.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Thank you.

000022
15