Donald Rumsfeld discusses terrorism, al-Qaeda and bin Laden.
My extended interview with Donald Rumsfeld in The City is now posted. Since Rumsfeld had been through much of the media circuit by this point, the questions are somewhat broader. But this portion of the interview may be of particular interest:
'The City: Regarding bin Ladenâ??you obviously ramped up capabilities in response to him. Do you feel vindicated by what happened?Rumsfeld: Iâ??ve been asked to write that, I havenâ??t written that.
The City: What are some of the things, practically, at DOD, that you put into place which helped bring this about?
Rumsfeld: I think really in terms of the special operations side of things, we did a great deal.
We expanded the special operations budget several times, and the number of people by something just under fifty percent. We took some of the tier three things they were doing and passed them off to conventional forces, so theyâ??d have more people available to do tier one and tier two, the tough stuff. And then we gave them additional authoritiesâ??theyâ??ve never been a supported command, theyâ??ve been a supporting command of some other command. We really focused on them, and each step was hardâ??because the services donâ??t like anything thatâ??s special, because they think theyâ??re special.
There are certain things you canâ??t achieve without beefing up the intelâ??we always had the capability to capture and kill, but in the old days, we wouldâ??ve used a cruise missile and not known for sure. But this way, you could actually go in physically. We got the Marines involved for the first time and created a thing called MARSOC, the Marines Special Operations Command, and the focus was intense on getting those capabilities right, and linked tightly with the Central Intelligence Agency.
I think it was the 9-11 Commission which recommended that DOD take over all covert action. I was asked about that, and I declined, because the combination of the CIA and the DOD together is a good thing, theyâ??ve got different authorities, free cash where DODâ??s got tighter restraints. I advised against transferring all that stuff over to DOD. Instead, George Tenet and I would have lunch every week and solve all the problems personally. Itâ??s more direct that way.
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You can read the full interview here.