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THE
WHITE HOUSE
Office
of the
Press SecretaryInternal Transcript September
5,2002
INTERVIEWOF THEVICE PRESIDENTBYJIMLEHRER, THE NEWS HOUR
Dwight D.
Eisenhower Executive
Office
BuildingQ Mr. Vice President, welcome.
THE
VICE PRESIDENT: Jim.
QWhathas9/11 doneto usAmericans?
THE
VICE PRESIDENT:
Well, I thinkwe'restill sortingthat out,
in a
sense. Clearly, there
are a lot of
lessons
to
be
learned,
if you
will,
out of
that event,
and
whatwe've
got to do
subsequently.
And I
think
in
terms
of
\l security policy,
for
example,
it has
changed
a lot
_,.;/
about
the way we
think about
how we
defend
the
country,
and
about what (inaudible) are. Hark back to the 20th centuryand theCold War,
where
mostof ussortof
grew
up andthought about deterring the Soviet Union from launching an
attack,
solid borders meant something, you could put at riskthe forces of another
country
and the
things
they valued to
deter
them from attacking the United States.September
llth
changed all of that, in a
sense
that it
was an
attack launched from
the
soil
of the
United States
--
anddesigned and planned in Germany, a good NATO ally. Idon'tmeanto becriticalofGermany.But thenatureof the
threat
changed so dramatically now that we have to thinkanew abouthow we defend ourselves.
It
means that we've
got to be
concerned
now
about parts
of
the
world
wedidn't
used
to
have
to
worry about, from
a
strategic standpoint
or a
military standpoint.
It may be
that
some remote corner of country X now, which nobody ever
cared
about before,
all of a
sudden
is a
place where
a
group
of
terrorists come together, plan an attack, organize it,maybe using biologicalweapons.A relative handful of
people
with access
to the
international travel system
and
finances to smuggle something into the
United
States and use
\t in a
deadly attack that wouldbe farmore devastating
000453
 
than what happenedonSeptember
llth
ifthey usedabiological weapon or even conceivably a nuclear weapon.
So
ourwhole approachtothinking abouthow wedefendourselves
is
dramatically different than
it
used
to be.
Q On a personal
level,
are we less free than wewere, just as individual Americans, going about our lives?
THE
VICE
PRESIDENT:
Ithink most peopleareprobablytaking extra precautions.
If it
fades over time,
it
probably
depends
on
what part
of the
country
you
live
in or
howmuch
you're
concerned about this,howclosewe are to
9/11.
Butclearly therearecontinuing piecesofevidencein
our
lives
every
day
about
the way in
which
we
changed
in
order
to
adapt
to the
potential threat.
The air
traffic
was
where
we had a
significant impacton air travel, just in terms of how we do something wealmost took
for
granted
in the
past.
Soit's
clearlyaffected that.Q Are youconcernedat allthatthegovernment,and
its
roletoreacttothis monumental eventhasmaybeoverreacted
in
terms
of
taking some freedoms
away
fromAmericans?
"^
THEVICE PRESIDENT:
I don't believe that, Jim. I
^/
think -- I
don't
thinkwe'vetaken freedom away from
~"
Americans. We've tried
to be
very sensitive
to
that.
We
have tried
to
alert people
to the
dangers here.
And my
concernisthat there willbeanother attack,and wewill
find,
once that attack has occurred, that there is something
we
could
have
done that might have
prevented
it, but we
didn't do it. My
concern
in
part
is as we get
farther
and
farther away from September
llth,
that we gradually let ourguard
down
over time.
It's
hard
to
keep
people
sort
of on
the
cusp of being prepared (inaudible) a potential attack.
And
what
I
think
is a
real danger
here
that
we'll
get
complacent.
It's
partof ournature. We're optimisticpeople,
we're
resilient.As I
said,
well, yes, theyhit us
on
9/11,
butthey'll
never
be
able
to do
that again. Well,I hope not.We'redoing everything we can to stop it. But
of
course
the
danger
is
that will
be --
that
as
that fadesandrecedes into history, that we'lllet
down
ourguard.
And
we can't allow that to
happen.
Q How do you account for the
fact
that there havebeen
no
other attacks
in
this
one
year?
THE
VICE
PRESIDENT:
Ithinkacombinationof things.
t.
You can
argue
it two
ways.
One is
that
we've
had
8
000454
 
considerable
success
in
disrupting
the
al
Qaeda
organization.^ Our
actions
in
Afghanistan,
our
militaryoperations against
the al
Qaeda
and
Taliban,
our
worldwide
efforts
with
the
finances, with intelligence coordination,
the
extent
to
which
we've
wrapped
up a
number
of
individuals
who
were crucial
in the
organization,
all of
that
I
thinkhas disrupted their planning and their operations.
On the
other hand,
their
normal pattern,
if you
lookback
at -- at
least
the
history
was as
much
as two
yearsbetween major attacks. We had the attack on the EastAfrican embassies in 1998; two years later we had the attackon the USSCole,oneyear laterwe had theattackon theWorld Trade Centerand thePentagon.So aperiodoftimehere between attacks wouldn't be that much out of the
norm
for
them.
Q
Youtalk about complacency.Ispartof thecomplacency a result of all these alerts that we had, and
then
nothing happens; and then we have another alert, andnothing
happens,
another alert
and
nothing
happens.
It'sbeen a while now since we've even had an alert.
THE
VICE PRESIDENT:
Right.
But
it's
one of
thosedifficult dilemmasforgovernment,in asense.Themoreoften
you go on
alert,
and
nothing
happens,
then peoplebecome sort of immune to the whole notion of crisis there.On the other hand, if you don't go on alert, and somethingdid happen, you have a terrible
problem
then, too. Soyou're trying always to seek the proper balance here.But it's not easy. These are judgment calls that thePresident and his senior advisors have to make on whether ornotaparticular threathasenough credibilitysothatyouwant to stand up the forces of
the
United States, if you
will,
and put the American people on guard for the next 48hours, the next two weeks, or whatever it might be.
Q But is it
correct
to
interpret
the
lack
of
alertsthese last several weeks and months as meaning -- what itappears to mean -- that the threat has in fact lessened?
THE
VICE PRESIDENT:
I
can't
say
that.
I
can't
say
that. There is a fluctuation in the reporting. Ourintelligence probably is better and more comprehensive todaythan
it's
been before. We've sortof got themechanismtuned up, focused on this particular problem, so we'reprobably picking up more than we did before. We're alsopickingup a lot ofnoise.Wepickupfalse reporting.
But to say
that there's
no
threat
out
there,
or
that
the
threat has receded, I just can't say that based on whatI'veseen today.
It's
not as though
there's
a one-to-one
000455
of 00

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