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American Morning

Interview with Bob Graham

Aired December 11, 2002 - 07:09   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: The 9/11 attacks may have been prevented if all intelligence agencies were reporting to one single person. A cabinet-level intelligence czar, one of the many recommendations from a joint congressional commission that's been investigating about what went wrong prior to 9/11.
This morning, the panel is making its findings public, and I talked with the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Bob Graham, from Florida. I started by asking him, not only what's going to come in the recommendations, but also his reaction, at the early stages right now, about these missiles being found off the coast of Yemen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. BOB GRAHAM (D-FL), CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: First, Bill, we don't know a lot about this incident yet, but what we do know raises a couple of concerns.

One, North Korea has for a long time been a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and the means of their delivery. You would have thought that after they had been found out restarting their nuclear plans and under the microscope of world attention that they would have been a little less bold than they had been in this incident. This indicates how serious North Korea is going to be.

Second, the destination apparently was Yemen. Yemen, next to Afghanistan, may well be the second-largest center of al Qaeda in the world. This indicates how important it is that we move the war on terrorism to these other places, where there is substantial al Qaeda presence, specifically and beginning with Yemen.

HEMMER (on camera): We're going to get a lot more reaction throughout the morning on that topic. Let's talk about your recommendations to be released today.

Part of this recommendation from your committee suggests that the United States needs an intelligence czar. The FBI director, Robert Mueller, strongly disagrees, says it's way too loaded with bureaucracy on top of what the U.S. government already has. How will an intelligence czar make Americans safer?

GRAHAM: Bill, we started this process by doing a close examination of what happened prior to September the 11th and why it happened. And one of the things we found over and over were instances in which one intelligence agency had information that would have been valuable to another but failed to share. And therefore, opportunities to understand this plot in time to break it up before the hijackers were able to kill over 3,000 people were lost.

We think one of the steps towards dealing with that is to put somebody in charge of the dozen intelligence agencies that we have, who can operate as the chief executive officer and enforce priorities and break down some of these institutional barriers that have kept people from talking to each other.

HEMMER: Would you say that is the headline from this report?

GRAHAM: That's a very important recommendation. We aren't the first people, frankly, to have made that recommendation. In fact, it's been consistently made by a number of studies of the intelligence community over the last decade, but it's run into the kind of resistance that you've just cited from the agencies that like the way it is now. They want to operate within their own turf. They resist having to share with others.

The problem is, there are 3,000 people who are dead with that being a major factor, and there will be more Americans killed until we can close these big gaps in our intelligence agencies.

HEMMER: There has been about 16 months since the FBI and the CIA and other agencies have had a chance to start making these reforms. The FBI strictly says that they've already put a lot of this motion into action already. Based on what you've seen, is that satisfactory at this point?

GRAHAM: No, I don't think the agencies have moved that far in the 455 days since September the 11th. We've got a long way to go, and one of those ways is we've got to change the culture of these agencies, we've got to increase their commitment to sharing and communication, we've got to reach out and bring in a new generation of people into our intelligence agencies that have the linguistic and cultural skills of the regions of the world, such as the Middle East and Central Asia, where we're going to be spending a lot of our time for the foreseeable future.

HEMMER: Sir, we only have about 10 seconds left here. You have said, though, given essentially a conditional yes to the following questions: Could the events of 9/11 2001 been prevented? Do you still stand by that conditional yes, sir?

GRAHAM: Yes. If all of the information that everybody knew had been put before the eyes of one set of people, and they had been curious and creative, and with some luck, I think they could have discovered this plot in enough time to have broken it up before we had 3,000 people dead.

HEMMER: Senator Bob Graham, thank you for your time today -- in Washington.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.







Aired December 11, 2002 - 07:09   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: The 9/11 attacks may have been prevented if all intelligence agencies were reporting to one single person. A cabinet-level intelligence czar, one of the many recommendations from a joint congressional commission that's been investigating about what went wrong prior to 9/11.
This morning, the panel is making its findings public, and I talked with the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Bob Graham, from Florida. I started by asking him, not only what's going to come in the recommendations, but also his reaction, at the early stages right now, about these missiles being found off the coast of Yemen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. BOB GRAHAM (D-FL), CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: First, Bill, we don't know a lot about this incident yet, but what we do know raises a couple of concerns.

One, North Korea has for a long time been a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and the means of their delivery. You would have thought that after they had been found out restarting their nuclear plans and under the microscope of world attention that they would have been a little less bold than they had been in this incident. This indicates how serious North Korea is going to be.

Second, the destination apparently was Yemen. Yemen, next to Afghanistan, may well be the second-largest center of al Qaeda in the world. This indicates how important it is that we move the war on terrorism to these other places, where there is substantial al Qaeda presence, specifically and beginning with Yemen.

HEMMER (on camera): We're going to get a lot more reaction throughout the morning on that topic. Let's talk about your recommendations to be released today.

Part of this recommendation from your committee suggests that the United States needs an intelligence czar. The FBI director, Robert Mueller, strongly disagrees, says it's way too loaded with bureaucracy on top of what the U.S. government already has. How will an intelligence czar make Americans safer?

GRAHAM: Bill, we started this process by doing a close examination of what happened prior to September the 11th and why it happened. And one of the things we found over and over were instances in which one intelligence agency had information that would have been valuable to another but failed to share. And therefore, opportunities to understand this plot in time to break it up before the hijackers were able to kill over 3,000 people were lost.

We think one of the steps towards dealing with that is to put somebody in charge of the dozen intelligence agencies that we have, who can operate as the chief executive officer and enforce priorities and break down some of these institutional barriers that have kept people from talking to each other.

HEMMER: Would you say that is the headline from this report?

GRAHAM: That's a very important recommendation. We aren't the first people, frankly, to have made that recommendation. In fact, it's been consistently made by a number of studies of the intelligence community over the last decade, but it's run into the kind of resistance that you've just cited from the agencies that like the way it is now. They want to operate within their own turf. They resist having to share with others.

The problem is, there are 3,000 people who are dead with that being a major factor, and there will be more Americans killed until we can close these big gaps in our intelligence agencies.

HEMMER: There has been about 16 months since the FBI and the CIA and other agencies have had a chance to start making these reforms. The FBI strictly says that they've already put a lot of this motion into action already. Based on what you've seen, is that satisfactory at this point?

GRAHAM: No, I don't think the agencies have moved that far in the 455 days since September the 11th. We've got a long way to go, and one of those ways is we've got to change the culture of these agencies, we've got to increase their commitment to sharing and communication, we've got to reach out and bring in a new generation of people into our intelligence agencies that have the linguistic and cultural skills of the regions of the world, such as the Middle East and Central Asia, where we're going to be spending a lot of our time for the foreseeable future.

HEMMER: Sir, we only have about 10 seconds left here. You have said, though, given essentially a conditional yes to the following questions: Could the events of 9/11 2001 been prevented? Do you still stand by that conditional yes, sir?

GRAHAM: Yes. If all of the information that everybody knew had been put before the eyes of one set of people, and they had been curious and creative, and with some luck, I think they could have discovered this plot in enough time to have broken it up before we had 3,000 people dead.

HEMMER: Senator Bob Graham, thank you for your time today -- in Washington.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.