ny b9 farmer misc- wh 1 of 3 fdr- 1-17-02 tom brokaw-nbc interview of cheney 457

8/14/2019 NY B9 Farmer Misc- WH 1 of 3 Fdr- 1-17-02 Tom Brokaw-NBC Interview of Cheney 457

1/6

THE WHITE HOUSEOffice of the Press Secretary

Internal Transcript January 17, 2002

INTERVIEW OF THE PRESIDENTBYTOM BROKAW, NBCOffice of THE VICE PRESIDENT

11:03 A.M. EST

Q Who determines when you go to the cave, and what arethe circumstances?THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's basically a process, Tom, oftrying to avoid bunching up too much. It's not an absoluterequiement that the President and I always be apart. Obviously,today, for example, we're both here.But the threat has changed since 9/11, if you will, that itused to be the greatest threat to a President was some nut with agun, a sole actor, if you will. Now you have to consider thepossibility of conspiracies, the large number of foreignterrorists coming into the country who might target thegovernment of the United States -- which we think they did onSeptember llth. They weren't successful, thanks to the people on

United 93, who took it down in Pennsyvlania.But we now have to deal with a different kind of threat thanwe did before.Q But you made the decision based on the daily threatassessment, or do you make it more randomly?THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's more randomly. And we make itbased primarily on being unpredictable. But, as I say, and we dotry to avoid bunching up and being in the same locale at the sametime. We take extra precautions now to make sure there is alwaysa successor outside the city of Washington. Today, Colin Powellis traveling through Central Asia. Usually, a Cabinet member,somebody who is in the line of succession -- the Speaker, forexample, and Denny Hastert is back home in Illinois today. Butwe're not all at one place at one time.Q You're going to have to rewrite the whole PresidentBush playbook, aren't you? I mean, you came into office

000292


2/6

determined not to get involved in nation-building. You were muchmore interested in unilateralism. Now, you've got alliances allover the world. You're going to have to rebuild Afghanistan andGod knows what else.THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I've got a different take on it,Tom. I think we've been successful -- I don't call itunilateralism; I call it leadership. I think the President hasbeen very forceful in dealing with allies. He was early on.There was some criticism, for example, of stepping out on Kyoto,or on some of the other issues that we dealt with, on ABM treaty,for example.But it's good, tough, aggressive U.S. leadership that hasmade it possible for us to do what we've done on Afghanistan.And allies, in part, sign on because they know you mean business,because they take you seriously, and because we've demonstratedthe depth of our commitment.And interesting things happen along the way. What

originally was going to be a huge flap of allies on the ABMtreaty, in fact, we went forward and did what we said we weregoing to do -- we have gotten out of the ABM treaty with almostno fuss at all. Everybody sort of said, okay, fine, that's theright thing to do.So it's that aggressive leadership that makes it possible tohave allies, and the President --Q But you are going to have to do nation-building andwe're going to have a troop presence in places that we neveranticipated.THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, in terms of nation-building,clearly, we do have to be concerned about the aftermath inAfghanistan. You don't want it to revert back "to the situationwe had before, where terrorists could base out of there.We do now have a greater reach, if you will, militarily,than we had before the events of September llth. We've gottroops in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and parts of theworld, part of the old Soviet empire that are now friendly to theU.S., willing to have our forces base there so that we canundertake our activities against terrorism in Afghanistan.Q There's also, in a curios way, a political bonus to allthis. Nobody wants war, but when there is war, the countryrallies behind the leadership of the administration. Some groups-- environmentalists, for example -- are saying, well, they'reusing the cover of war to roll back some of the environmentalgains that were made during the Clinton administration. Peoplein Nevada are saying, he came out here two years ago and told us

J000293


3/6

they'd never store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain; now they'vedecided to do that.Can you front load some of this stuff under the cover of warand get ready for --THE VICE PRESIDENT: What we said on Nevada and nuclearwaste -- I was the guy who delivered the message -- was that we

would follow a very rigorous procedure, we'd use EPA standards,in terms of deciding whether or not we had achieved the level ofsafety that's required.Now, Secretary Abraham thinks we have. We've still got along way to go, it's not a done deal yet.Q The govenror is not too happy, though.THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I mean, it's bound to becontroversial, without question. But, you know, these are toughdecisions. If you're not prepared to make tough decisions, youshouldn't run for President. And the President has been verygood at taking on these issues and making the tough decisions.In terms of trying to roll back environmental protection,though, that's simply not true. Ask them to cite where we'vedone that. The fact of the matter is we think we've got good,solid environmental policy going forward. We haven't repealedany fundamental environmental law at all. Our Justice Departmentjust ruled the other day on an important area, for example, withrespect to a new source review on the Clean Air Act, that theaggressive posture EPA had been pursuing was, in fact, thecorrect one.Q Enron. Why shouldn't the American public know all thedetails about those six meetings that the Enron executives hadwith your "staff, or with you, during the energy task force?THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there's an important principleinvolved here, Tom. What we've done -- what we've had is arequest from Congress that I release the names of everybody I metwith as we went through the process of putting together theenergy package, what they said to me, what kind of advice theygave .I think that's a terrible precedent to set. I think it's amistake for us to be in a position where the President and THEVICE PRESIDENT can't sit down with anybody we want to and talkabout any subject we want to, without the people who give usadvice having to consider the likelihood that everything they sayto us will be public. If we were unable to receive honest advicefrom people, it would significantly inhibit the quality of thedecision making process we do down here.

J 000294


4/6

There's nothing secret about what we did. We set up a taskforce that I ran, at the direction of the President. We produced105 policy recommendations. It was all done in public. Weactually produced -- printed thousands of copies of it,distributed it all over town.

Now, in terms of the people we met with -- we met with allkinds of folks: people from the energy industry; we met. withutilities; we met with consumers and environmentalists;congressmen; governors. It's the normal way we make policyaround here.

But what's been requested, in this particular case, is forthe first time, as Vice President I should be required to tell amember of Congress every time I meet with somebody, what they sayto me, what the subjects were that were discussed. We thinkthat's a bad precedent.

The lawyers have made the case for us that, in fact, thatwould seriously weaken and undermine the Presidency; it wouldinhibit future White Houses, in terms of their operations; andthat we've got a very strong legal case here. So we may wellhave to fight it out in courts.

Q But, legally, why not protect the others andpolitically deal with just the Enron piece of it? Because it'snot going to go away, do you think?THE VICE PRESIDENT: Enron, in terms of their role here, was

minor, no more significant than any other energy company. Italked to dozens of companies during the course of that processand that had absolutely nothing to do with the tragedy thatultimately befell Enron.

The Enron situation, obviously, is of concern. But thePresident made it very clear we want a very thoroughinvestigation of what happened at Enron; if laws were broken,people ought to be prosecuted. And he's also working and givendirections to his Cabinet, Agencies and Departments to make surewe look at things like pension reform, and so forth, to protectAmerican people in the future so that it doesn't happen again.But all of that is separate and apart from what we did here.

Q Back to the matter of terrorism. The President told methis morning that he's very concerned that there are still cellsout there in this country, and that we could be living in analert for the rest of your term. Do you share that assessment?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I do. I think the numbers vary interms of the estimates of how many people went through thetraining camps but, clearly, there were thousands and thousandsof people that were trained in the terrorist training camps inAfghanistan under Osama bin Laden as part of the al Qaeda

000295


5/6

organization. And they're now operating in 50 or 60 countriesaround the world.We know they had significant operations here. But justsince the events of September llth, we've also uncovered cells inGermany, Spain, Italy and Southeast Asia. The folks in Singaporerecently wrapped up a couple of major cells there. They are allover the world, and there are probably some right here in the

United States, as well, too, that we don't know about yet.So the only safe assumption for us is, is that this is goingto be a long-term struggle and we have to be prepared to dealwith it wherever we find it.Q Any interview with you comes around to your health atsome point. How are you feeling?THE VICE PRESIDENT: Good. Well-behaved, clean living.Q Can I check that out with Mrs. Cheney?THE VICE PRESIDENT: You certainly can. She's in charge ofthe food supply. We live a very healthy and sensible life, dothose things that are prudent, you want to do, with somebody withmy history.Q And your enthusiasm for continuing for as long as you

| possibly can?THE VICE PRESIDENT: As long as I can do the job and thePresident wants me to do it, I'm delighted to be here. You know,I never planned to come back. When I was first in the West Wingover 30 years ago, I shared a closet on the top floor with

another guy, worked for Don Rumsfeld. And you were here in thosedays, covering the White House. _To come back now, this is my third White House tour, myfifth time in government, and have an opportunity to serve atthis time with this President is something that I wouldn't havemissed for the world. It's really been a tremendous experience.Q Will there ever be, in your long and distinguishedlife, another day like 9/11?THE VICE PRESIDENT: I hope not. I hope not. That was thekind of event -- clearly, everybody remembers where they were

then. And the circumstances, the loss of life, the attack uponthe United States is something we need to really do everything wecan to prevent ever having it happen again. And that's thebusiness we're about.Q Do you think the American people have a full

i realization of that task?i 000296


6/6

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think a lot of them do. I'm not surethat it's really still struck home to everybody. A lot of folksout there I think, as they should, have gone on with their livesand weren't imminently or directly affected by it. But I thinkthey'll see, as we go forward, that we're still very vulnerable,we've got a lot of work to do to harden the target, so to speak,to make it tougher for them to come after us.In the final analysis, no defense is going to be perfectagainst a terrorist. You might be 99 percent successful, butthat 1 percent can kill you, especially if they can get in withweapons of mass destruction. And the only way for us toguarantee that that doesn't happen again is to go on offense. Wehave to go destroy the terrorists before they can strike us, andthat's what we're about.Q Mr. Vice President, thank you.THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Tom. Good to see you again.

EN D 11:14 A . M . EST

090297

ny b9 farmer misc- wh 1 of 3 fdr- 1-17-02 tom brokaw-nbc interview of cheney 457

Documents