NEWS TRANSCRIPT from the United States Department of Defense
DoD News Briefing Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz Friday, Oct. 26, 2001
(Interview with David Wastell, London Sunday Telegraph.)
Q: Thank you very much for seeing us. It's an interesting day to see you. As you know, the British government announced
today that there's a large contingent of British troops being committed to the region, including some commandos. I
wondered if you --
Wolfowitz: You have some of the best in the world.
Q: That's what I wanted to ask you about. What is our contribution at this point? How important is it to you?
Wolfowitz: I think it's very important. In the first place it's very important in the level of I guess what Napoleon
called morale -- war is 25 percent material and 75 percent morale. Having one country that is with us 100 percent the
way the UK is is fantastic. But it's more than just that. It's extraordinarily capable people.
I've been following the activities of particularly your SAS people in the Gulf region since I first met Peter de la
Billier back in the late 1970s who later became your commander in the Gulf War. There is a wealth of experience and an
extraordinarily high level of military competence. I wouldn't want to say there is anybody as good as our people, but
I'm sure your folks would say the same thing. They're clearly world class.
Q: We think they're going to be operating together. I don't know much about how these things work, but the impression
is they're going to be collaborating.
Wolfowitz: I may know a little more than you, but I can't talk about that part.
It is true, it's well known because of the extreme danger of these operations that these are people who are very
reluctant to rely on anybody even of a different unit, much less a different nationality. And it is striking that the
British are put in a different category. They're almost treated like our people. So I think the cooperation will be very
close.
Q: Dick Cheney has said on more than one occasion, I think, that this may be the first war for you in which you may
have suffered more civilian casualties than you do military casualties. Do you think that could be true for Britain as
well?
Wolfowitz: Well, I think you already suffered more civilian casualties than any previous terrorist incident in your
history. That's my understanding. I think there were 100 or 200 killed in the World Trade Center.
Q: We think, yeah.
Wolfowitz: So you're already, like we are, unfortunately, starting with a large number on the table.
I don't know. I think it would be prudent to anticipate that these murderers will attack the UK as well, and more so
because you're so closely identified with us.
Q: And frankly, we're more convenient, in their faces in many ways. We're easy to get to or into.
Wolfowitz: I don't know about the into. We seem to be awfully easy to get into, and that is the decisive thing. It's
not the distance you have to travel, it's getting across the border.
Frankly, I think in some ways you have a lead on us because you've been dealing with domestic terrorism in very serious
ways for so long. So you probably may be a little better in that department. But I would urge your compatriots not to
think that this is not just an attack on the United States.
Q: Obviously there are lots of [contact persons] here, but do you think that the unpleasant arsenal of possible weapons
that they may have, including chemicals and possibly biological, might be deployed against civilians? Either here or
elsewhere?
Wolfowitz: Well we don't know the origin of the letter attacks, but it is certainly a reasonable assumption that they
have that weapon in hand already. So I think you have to think about the worst-case possibilities, then you make some
prudent judgments about how far do you go in turning your normal life upside down in order to deal with them. Obviously
that's one of their objectives as well.
Q: But there's an aside, there really is an aside I think, that the European Defense Force is something that I know
you've discussed in the past, but people from (inaudible) leading from Britain. What is your sense of the implications
for that global bit? What is the joint effort that's now being made? Tell us about the need for such a European Defense
Force, if anything.
Wolfowitz: I'm not sure. I must say one of the things that is striking to me, what it says about NATO, because I was in
London ten years ago for sort of the first post-Cold War NATO Summit, at least advertised as such, where we talked about
the new relationships with the former Soviet Union, [I guess] the Warsaw Pact had been fully unraveled, and there are
two things I remember that were rather striking. One was Mrs. Thatcher's observation that the world stands on the dawn
of a new era just as it did in 1919 and 1945. I think those were the years she picked; i.e., the new era never quite
turned out the way we expected. Was this '91 or '90? I'm sorry, it must have been '90, because a month later Iraq
attacked Kuwait and the new era wasn't quite what we anticipated. It was '90, it was 11 years ago.
But the other thing is that we were sort of, those of us who believed in NATO, were very conscious that many people
were saying we don't need NATO any more, the Soviet Union's gone away, the threat's gone away, and here we are 11 years
later and we have NATO AWACS defending the United States, and we have NATO playing an indispensable role in the Balkans.
And both of the views that America doesn't need NATO any more because the threat's gone away, and Europeans don't need
NATO any more because they can do it as a European force, at least as of October 2001 it would seem that NATO is an
absolutely crucial instrument.
And that's really been our view of the whole European defense effort. It is fine if it stays within the umbrella of
NATO and it will be a luxury none of us can afford if it somehow (inaudible).
Q: Can I ask you, there's been lots of comments in the last few days about the apparently slow progress of the current
campaign in Afghanistan, speculation about whether bin Laden might escape, it's going to take a long time, what it does
for next summer. What is your assessment of where the war has got to now? What progress has been made? Are the obstacles
worse than we've been expecting?
Wolfowitz: I think we've been saying from the beginning that this is going to be a long campaign, and the campaign in
Afghanistan is -- the whole campaign is going to be a long campaign and the campaign in Afghanistan is going to be a
long one. And I think we're encountering some of the unrealistic expectations that were created by the conflicts of the
last decade.
I think obviously we want to be careful not to make some of the mistakes that other foreign powers have made, most
notably the Soviet Union. Of course our goals are very different than the Soviet Union and that shapes a different kind
of campaign. We're not trying to control Afghanistan or rule Afghanistan. We're trying to wrest it from the nasty
Taliban and create conditions where we can root out the terrorists.
It is hard to, I think -- in the first place I think it's hard to make a very good assessment of where the balance of
forces lies inside Afghanistan. It's intrinsically a sort of murky picture. But also I think it's a hard one to measure
from a snapshot because the nature of things in Afghanistan seem to ebb and flow, I think. Partly because people go from
one side to the other sometimes several times in a single day, I'm told.
So people are looking, in my view, for results, dramatic results, much too early.
Q: Even one of your people, Rear Admiral Stufflebeem said on I think Wednesday, he said I'm a bit surprised at how
doggedly they're hanging onto their power, talking about the Taliban. [ transcript:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/t10242001_t1024stu.html ] But that your military are also --
Wolfowitz: I don't think (inaudible) was surprised.
Q: Okay.
Wolfowitz: He's a tough customer, you know that.
Q: What do you think in the sort of debate about whether bin Laden would be better dead, captured, chased out of the
country or whatever? What's your judgment on that?
Wolfowitz: We just want to get our hands on him any way we can, then we'll figure out what to do with him.
Q: What about the --
Wolfowitz: It's also important to emphasize, obviously there's no single terrorist we would like to get more than that
one, but this is not about one man. There's a huge network out there that will operate even if we get him. On the other
hand, if we got the entire network it might not matter whether we get him.
So clearly, he's number one on our target list, but the president has emphasized over and over again this is a global
problem, there are global terrorist networks that work with one another, there are states that support them. We're
after, I think this is now, in the secretary's words, we're out to drain the swamp not simply to kill individual snakes.
(Phone interruption)
Q: -- the hours must be tremendous. They can't be what you expected. It would have been an exceptionally challenging
job here, but not quite --
Wolfowitz: It's worse, yeah. It is worse.
My staff keeps reminding me this is a marathon, not a sprint, and we've got to get back to a more sustainable pace.
But I'll tell you, the thing I miss the most is Sundays off. I can go a long time if I get one day off a week, but
there was a long stretch there when we were working seven days a week. I got last Sunday off, but I can't complain.
Q: Back on the war for a minute, or to the progress of it, can you say at least what the ranges are of, possibility
(inaudible) in Afghanistan, for administering (inaudible).
Wolfowitz: I think it's really impossible. And I think it's a fundamental mistake to try to predict --
(Phone interruption)
Q: We were talking about the duration. That it's fundamentally impossible to --
Wolfowitz: You really can't know. And I think if you sort of build expectations of a particular schedule you're setting
yourself up for trouble, to be honest.
Obviously the sooner the better, but we'll take as long -- we'll do what it takes. We clearly are in this to win.
Q: What's the duration of, as it were, the bigger campaign? The campaign on (inaudible) terrorism. People talk as if
it's maybe 50 years or something. Looking at history, do we have anything to judge this by?
Wolfowitz: We don't. We've never fought an enemy like this that is so hard to identify or pin down. I guess the 50
years come from the Cold War analogy which has a certain applicability. There are things about this where it's helpful
to think of the Cold War in the sense that it's a global campaign, it's a sustained campaign, you're going to need help
from a lot of different people.
I think also that at some level it's ultimately a battle of ideas, just as the Cold War was ultimately a battle of
ideas.
Of course the military piece of it is very different. Where in the Cold War we were dealing with an enemy that was too
strong to defeat militarily, in this war we're dealing with an enemy that is hard to find, but once you find it is much
weaker than we are. So it's a different kind of balance. I would hope it's not going to take 50 years, but I think we're
talking about years and not months.
Q: Well doesn't it have a terrible sort of chilling strength from the lengths at which they are apparently willing to
go to do damage to us domestically?
Wolfowitz: It's pretty horrible, that's right.
Q: We don't have that strength, do we? We're not willing to inflict anything like that on anybody else to win this, are
we?
Wolfowitz: It's not clear that you could win it by doing that. I think the greater thing to fear more is that they will
push us into doing things to ourselves that we would rather not see and rather not do.
Q: For example?
Wolfowitz: Changing the way we live. Changing what we consider acceptable infringements on individual liberty. Clearly
we have to adjust in certain ways as long as they're out there, and that is one of the reasons to defeat them sooner
rather than later so that we don't end up having to live that way for a long time.
But they clearly are willing to do anything, and that makes them extremely dangerous.
Q: Can I ask you, something many (unintelligible) organizations have been complaining already about things like these
cluster bombs and the sense that there will be critiques of some of the methods used by the United States
(unintelligible) countries in the list. What's your reaction to that?
Wolfowitz: I guess my main reaction is we lost somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 people in a single day. We're now
being threatened with weapons that could kill tens of thousands of people. We're trying to avoid killing innocent
people, but we have to win this war and we'll use the weapons we need to in this war.
Q: I'm talking (unintelligible) should they start to use even more hideous weapons themselves, is there a point at
which we will be willing to use (unintelligible) bigger and more (unintelligible) weapons than (unintelligible) weapons?
Wolfowitz: It's a mistake to ever take anything off the table, but I think the real problem is finding the guilty
people and getting them. We've said over and over again, correctly, this is not a war against the Afghan people, it's a
war against foreign terrorists who have penetrated Afghanistan and a medieval sort of regime that is oppressing the
people of Afghanistan. I think this new level of threat obviously suggests what was I think clear already, which is the
United States has enormous will and willingness to do what it takes to get this job done. We'll do what we need to do
it.
Q: As a matter of fact do you think, someone said to me that using small nuclear weapons against some of these caves
would actually be the best way to get people once they're in these elaborate --
Wolfowitz: You can speculate about everything, but we have weapons to take out caves without going nuclear.
Q: Can I ask you just on --
Wolfowitz: There's just a lot of caves. That's the bigger problem.
Q: True, a lot of (inaudible) nuclear weapons.
What's your instinct on the origin of this domestic anthrax attack?
Wolfowitz: I don't think one should go on instinct, I really don't. I think it's clear that this is a deliberate and
malevolent act and I think we passed any doubt about that point some time ago. But where it comes from or what these
people might do next are things at this point we would only be speculating about. We're working very hard to try to
trace the origins of it and we are doing everything we can to anticipate what people who have this might do next.
Q: -- other biological weapons of the moment?
Wolfowitz: Well, or more extensive use of this one. Because so far it's a horrible weapon, but distribution is
unlimited. It could get much worse.
Q: And we could see it elsewhere in the world I suppose, too.
Wolfowitz: That's right. There have been cases reported in South America but I don't know if any of them have been
confirmed.
Q: I'm not sure. I don't believe any of them have been --
Wolfowitz: I've only read about them in the newspapers which they did say had not been confirmed.
Q: I want to ask you about Iraq for a minute, a topic that you have talked about a lot in the past. Is it at least
conceivable that Iraq could be the originator of this anthrax --
Wolfowitz: I don't think you can rule out anybody. I know the Iraqis have worked on weapons of mass destruction, as
have a number of other states that support terrorism, and as the secretary's said often, the combination of state
support for terrorism and states pursuing weapons of mass destruction is a particularly deadly combination.
But right now our focus is on al Qaeda in Afghanistan. It's very important to make sure that whatever we do retains
that focus so that we aren't sitting here three years from now discussing what our time table's going to be in
Afghanistan.
Q: So you are content in the end, although we all understand (unintelligible), you're content for the time being with
the administration's position that we'll come back to reconsider --
Wolfowitz: There's something very fundamental which I think a lot of people outside government don't appreciate and
that is it is terrific to have a president like this one who listens to debate and makes clear decisions and when
decisions are made people pursue them as a team because --
(Phone interruption)
Wolfowitz: Let's back up. I was in mid-paragraph or mid-sentence.
Q: You were talking I think about the kind of thoughts that you had.
Wolfowitz: It is very important in situations like this one that you have a single policy and not two or three
different policies competing with one another, and it makes a huge difference that you have a president who's willing to
listen to debate and make decisions and sort of march along.
The president's father was remarkable in that way ten years ago. I once made a list for myself, it was about 12 really
difficult major decisions that he made, and you could sort of almost sense the energy that that created in the
bureaucracy because people would, instead of continuing to spin their wheels arguing old debates, they would march on,
and we went through that one pretty methodically, and I think, I feel very much the same way here.
Q: And we should understand, correct me if I'm wrong, that at some point further down the road when the campaign in
Afghanistan has progressed a lot further, that question will be revisited as part of the policy, is that right?
Wolfowitz: Part of the policy is we don't discuss future -- (Laughter)
Q: What next, as it were.
Wolfowitz: But also people shouldn't think that we're going to go to war with the whole world. I mean I think after
Afghanistan a lot of people who have been in the business of supporting terrorism are going to have second thoughts
about it. We may be able to achieve some of the results we want to achieve by effective, coercive diplomacy rather than
by true military power. So we expect a different environment when we get there.
Q: Is there a danger that, as it were, in the efforts to preserve the coalition that some of the objectives of the
United States and Britain are being --
Wolfowitz: We don't talk about "the" coalition. The secretary talks about "coalitions" and I think that's the right way
to think about it. We have one coalition for dealing with Afghanistan and obviously Pakistan and Uzbekistan are
absolutely crucial members of that coalition. We have to think in a great many things that we do about how our actions
are going to affect the stability of those two countries that are right on the front line.
Indonesia, which is a country where I was ambassador for three years, is a very important country with respect to the
role of al Qaeda and terrorism in Southeast Asia, but Indonesia's not important at all with respect to Afghanistan.
Q: What does that tell us about Indonesia then? Will it be a focus in the future of --
Wolfowitz: No, it says that -- we're not in the future. Right now we're looking for ways to help them root out their
own terrorist problems. But we're not looking for them to take positions that may be very controversial with their own
people with respect to the war in Afghanistan. Obviously if they can be helpful, that's great, but that's sort of what I
meant before about the UK being an ally who is with us on everything and 100 percent. There are other countries who will
be comfortable cooperating with us quietly and privately and sometimes covertly and who will be reluctant to speak out
openly. I suppose there are some others who will give us great public support and not do very much in private, but at
least they won't hurt us.
Q: -- ordinary lives, complaining on the ground as you must have heard a million times by now. We hear it from our
(unintelligible), from our correspondents in Northern Afghanistan, they're complaining that America is not doing enough
to deal with the Taliban forces on the front line; that planes are flying over and not dropping bombs, in quite large
numbers, apparently. And they say that your over-concern about [defending] Pakistan is (unintelligible) the action on
the ground.
Can you just give me your readout of what the truth is on that?
Wolfowitz: I don't think there's a political constraint on our operations if that's what's implied. I think we are
certainly anxious to see them make as much progress as quickly as possible, and by the way, I think that's also
important to averting a possibly humanitarian disaster up north in the winter because a point that is not mentioned
often enough is that a lot of the humanitarian problem in Afghanistan is caused deliberately by the Taliban cutting off
relief supplies to areas that are not under their control. So we would like to see them make as much progress as
possible.
It is hard, frankly, I mean I've read those reports, I've heard others delivered privately, and I've heard different
accounts. It's hard to get precise ground troops on exactly what's going on in a very wild country with some very wild
people, but part of what we're working on very hard is to get as much direct contact as possible with the Northern
Alliance forces, and indeed with all opposition forces in Afghanistan so that we can coordinate what we do in a way that
is of maximum utility to them.
Q: In an ideal world --
Wolfowitz: Not, by the way -- I mean it's not as easy as most people think including probably most people who are used
to fighting guerilla wars in Afghanistan.
Q: Is it conceivable that before the winter sets in hopefully and everything grinds more or less to a halt, at least as
far as [lines] are concerned, that the Northern Alliance will have, the anti-Taliban forces could have got into Kabul
and taken over Kabul and taken over the other cities in the north of the country and established a kind of zone? Is that
at least a possibility? Or is that looking too on the bright side?
Wolfowitz: The word "conceivable" encompasses a lot. But I think the right way for us to think is because we're not in
this as an academic exercise, the right way for us to think is to plan on what could be a long time table. As things
happen faster, obviously we'd like to make them happen faster, then we'll take advantage of that. But don't build a plan
that depends on getting something done by --
Q: Okay.
Wolfowitz: That's a famous phrase that gets you in trouble in military operations.
Q: Can I ask you very briefly about Israel? Everybody's concerned about that. How dangerous is the position in the
Middle East with everything else we are doing now? In other words, how much does it spill over?
Wolfowitz: I think it spills over. I think it's one of those things that creates -- it compounds the insecurity of a
number of the Muslim countries that are opposed to terrorism and against terrorism, supporting us, and probably the
closer they are to Israel the more it exposes them.
(Interruption)
Wolfowitz: I think the closer they are to Israel probably the more pressure it puts on them, so I think it's more of a
problem for Egypt and Saudi Arabia, let's say, than it is for Pakistan or Indonesia. But obviously, even before
September 11th we were very interested in seeing the violence calm down in the Middle East and the progress made between
the Israelis and the Palestinians. It would be far more desirable, I mean far more important today to see that kind of
progress, and we're working hard at it. But we have to prosecute the war against terrorism regardless of what's
happening there.
Q: Sure. Is it hypocritical to tell the Israelis not to pursue what they view as terrorists directly, I'm sure in the
Palestinian territory, when you're doing this in Afghanistan? How do you answer that? It's a point they're constantly
making.
Wolfowitz: I'm not in the business of judging hypocritical. I think there's no question that it's helpful to us and to
our effort and to the shaky condition of some of the countries that are supporting us, the more the Israelis can show
some restraint. It's not a question of what's justified or unjustified. It's a question, as I view it, that Israel
obviously faces a very difficult problem with terrorism, and it's a bit presumptuous of us to judge as though we were in
their shoes what things are effective and what things aren't effective. But it's not presumptuous of us to say to them,
look, we have some serious political/strategic problems which are made worse every time you appear to over-react. So if
you can just show some restraint, that helps us.
Q: Does it annoy you to be constantly tagged as a hawk or a hardliner or a right winger? The phrases that we
journalists slip next to your name to make our life simpler?
Wolfowitz: If I were in the academic world I could explain my position and you could decide what it is, but I don't do
that now.
Q: It doesn't annoy you to be constantly characterized in this way? I just wondered what it feels like from the inside
--
Wolfowitz: All I can say is that I am amused sometimes by the views that are attributed to me, but I'm not allowed to
say which ones are right and which ones aren't. (Laughter)
Q: Can you give me any sense of how President Bush, we all see this from outside, we all believe has been transformed
in some way by this event. Can you give any sense of what you've seen of him as how he's different or how he's managing,
how he's adjusting?
Wolfowitz: I suppose those of us who knew him pretty well from going back to October of 1998, I would say I got to know
him pretty well, I expected this sort of performance from him if called upon, and that's the reason why I was very proud
to help in his campaign and proud to serve. I think he has terrific qualities of leadership as somebody who's willing to
listen, who is willing to make decisions, who has a certain appropriate humility. I think that often goes with good
decision makers. Harry Truman had it, Abraham Lincoln had it. My heroes. Winston Churchill is one of my heroes, and his
humility wasn't one of his great strengths. (Laughter) But I think he was somebody who was always listening to other
people. That was one of his strengths. And so yeah, he has risen to the occasion in a way that may even surprise him a
little, but I think he had all those qualities before and a certain clarity, simplicity.
The intellectuals are always looking for a president who can pass a Ph.D. qualifying exam. That's not what presidents
are supposed to do. Presidents are supposed to understand things with a clarity that allows them to be decisive and
allows them to explain to the larger public what has to be done in ways that gain support, and I think this president
has those qualities. It's obviously improving every day, but it's not a surprise that he's risen to the occasion.
Q: If you've got time for one more, I'll just ask you what you think about the world being turned upside down since
you've been here. You're always telling people to think outside the box and to think in different ways about everything,
but here we are now suddenly in a world in which Russia is becoming almost overnight a close ally. Countries who you've
had an ongoing (unintelligible). Could you have imagined that such a shakeup could have happened in such a short time?
Wolfowitz: It's interesting you pick those two examples. It's funny. Because those are two things I think we should
have done five years ago or ten years ago. It's been a terrible mistake, I think, of U.S. policy that we have isolated
the Indonesian military and isolated the Pakistani military, and it's not that I don't understand the problems that led
us down that road, but it was ultimately so counter-productive from the point of view of all of the values that we
cherish to have pushed those two important groups kind of out into the cold, and I think this is an opportunity to fix
it.
And with respect to Russia, I've felt for ten years basically this is a country that has gone from being a potential
enemy to being a potential ally. If you go back and look at the kinds of things the president was saying as a candidate
back in May of last year which a number of us helped to write, that we need to get out of the Cold War box where the
most important thing is to preserve the ability of these two countries to incinerate one another on 30 minutes' notice.
I think that should have gone on the ash heap of history along with some other things. So finally it's moving in that
direction.
Q: Could you envisage Russia inside NATO?
Wolfowitz: I could, but not just -- before you put the words in my mouth -- not now and not five years from now, but 20
years from now? I can envision Russia as part of Europe. I think that's where they want to go, I think that's where we
should want them to go. And when that happens, unless people decide we don't need NATO any more, which I hope they won't
because I have a feeling it will have a utility long beyond this crisis, that that means some Russian relationship with
NATO.
But I think the first step is to understand that we have huge interests that are aligned with one another rather than
being potential enemies. It's a bigger problem on the Russian side than on our side. But we have (inaudible).
I thought where you were going to take me was sort of what's the next big thinking outside the box, and I think one of
the things I've been saying is even when we're fighting this war we have to think about what might be the next war. The
next one, just judging from history, will be very different from this one which will by then be the last one.
One of the clear lessons of September 11th which we shouldn't have had to learn again is to be prepared for the
unexpected, to anticipate surprise. The answer to that isn't to get perfect intelligence so you're never surprised. You
should get the best intelligence you can, but the lesson of history is there are going to be surprises. And if you build
a defense posture based on the idea that there aren't any threats any more, or you build it on the basis that we know
exactly what the threat is and we'll prepare for that one threat, then you're exposed to the surprise that comes from an
unexpected direction.
You can't prepare for everything, but you need a posture that has some flexibility built into it. And I would say I
hope, but we'll probably have to learn this again, we can afford what it takes to provide for an adequate defense. And
when we don't do it or if we're unable to provide for it, the costs are so much greater than the $10 or $20 billion that
we argued about in heated debates of a few months ago.
Q: In effect, that's what we're seeing now.
Wolfowitz: Absolutely.
Q: I don't know quite what we could have done to prevent this, but there has to have been something.
Wolfowitz: We probably couldn't have prevented it, but the point is, it's easy for me to come up with a list of tens of
billions of dollars of capability that would have been nice to have invested in over the last five or ten years that we
didn't. Starting with airborne warning and surveillance aircraft. We're fortunately able to borrow from the Europeans,
but we're using more than half of our AWACS fleet to defend the United States. We didn't plan on that.
We are making very good use of unmanned aerial vehicles, the Predator aircraft in Afghanistan. I'd like to have ten
times the number that we have.
So there are areas of investment we just shorted ourselves and we'll make it up. We have, we're not, we're still in a
very strong position militarily, but it was penny wise and pound foolish in my opinion not to have invest earlier.
Q: Do you feel the Predator --
Wolfowitz: There is an industrial base issue. You can't suddenly turn your -- this is not like turning on paper mills
or something. It takes awhile to build up your capacity, but we're doing it as fast as we can.
Q: Thank you very much for your time.
Wolfowitz: Thank you.
ENDS