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American Morning
Interview with Seymour Hersh
Aired December 16, 2002 - 07:19 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: If you cannot catch them, kill them. That's what the president has reportedly authorized the CIA to do with the world's most wanted terrorists, about two dozen in fact, two dozen suspects said to be on the administration's hit list.
Journalist Seymour Hersh, writing in the current issue of "The New Yorker" magazine, says the terror manhunt has ignited a battle within the Bush administration. Sey Hersh is our guest this morning live in Washington.
Good to see you again -- good morning to you.
SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER": Good morning.
HEMMER: Where is the rub here within the administration?
HERSH: Well, it's really inside the Pentagon. The CIA is involved to the extent that they're providing the intelligence that helps pick out the bad guys -- al Qaeda members, et cetera -- that we want to get rid of, or we want to capture or kill. And the problem is that the real driving force for this is Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon. The CIA is going to provide the intelligence, but the Pentagon is going to provide the man power.
It's going to be military guys -- Special Forces guys, our Delta Force, our SEALs, our special -- our little Army unit that's little- known called the Grey Fox, it's an undercover unit.
HEMMER: Hang on one second there, Seymour. What's the difference between what's being done right now -- and I think the best-case example is the situation in Yemen with that Hellfire missile. Clearly, it looked like a CIA operation, but what you're suggesting is drawing in SEALs changes the focus of the mission, is that correct?
HERSH: I think the actual order to hit comes out of the military. I think the CIA provides the intelligence, but the actual chain-of-command is through the Pentagon. And I think the Pentagon is going to have a very big role in this.
And in my reporting, I found a series of documents that indicated that Donald Rumsfeld, as early as July, began to push very hard on the inside to get the Special Forces command ready to get into what he calls "man hunting." And there was opposition to that. There is opposition to that inside the Special Forces.
HEMMER: What do the Special Forces say about that authority then?
HERSH: Well, basically, their problem is they're worried about what happens -- you know, look, if you have perfect intelligence and you do it right, and you can't capture the guys and it's either capture them or lose them, if you don't kill them -- you know, if you can't get them, I can understand assassination.
But there's a lot of concern about going into third countries where we haven't declared war. We're not -- this is not an Afghanistan we're talking about. We're talking about tracking down guys wherever they are in the Middle East, sending in teams sometimes on their bellies, covert teams to go and take out people individually, capture them if you can, but if you can't, kill them.
The idea is, the documents I have show, that we're not interested in bringing these people into the court of law, no justice system here. We're just going to take them out, and if we grab them, we'll interrogate them somewhere outside of the United States...
HEMMER: That's pretty much speculation at this point, would you not agree? It hasn't happened yet.
HERSH: Actually, I was quoting documents that lined out this policy. This is a policy that is very much in play. This is why they have set up a list, a master list of people that are under sort of the most wanted list.
And the problem for the military is simply that nobody is interested in keeping al Qaeda alive. We're not interested in that at all, but it's a question of what happens, how good is the intelligence going to be?
Eventually, down the line, the fear is -- as we saw in Vietnam when we had a similar assassination program on a much larger scale called Phoenix -- what began as a small program to get individuals soon got a little bit out of control, and before long, you weren't sure of the kind of intelligence you had.
And it seems to me, before you want to start killing people -- this is what some of the people in the military also are arguing -- we really should be trying more to capture them, rather than simply outright getting rid of them, even with the help...
HEMMER: But you know -- but you know, Sey (ph), this is dirty work, and nothing is perfect when it comes to operations like these.
Address this one. You quote Donald Rumsfeld in your article as saying that the military is lacking in agility, lax in tactical surprise -- quote -- "We must be willing to accept the risk associated with a smaller footprint" -- your words, quoting Donald Rumsfeld. Is the military right now willing to accept what you're referring to, and that's collateral damage?
HERSH: I think the problem for Rumsfeld is, he doesn't think that the leadership of the military -- the documents I have, the memos I have from this summer and later this fall, show that there's a sort of a struggle between the civilian leadership and the military leadership.
The civilians think that the too many generals are Clinton-ized (ph). They came to power, they came into high rank during the Clinton years. They're not aggressive enough. But they used the word, "forward-leaning," and I think there's a sense that we want to get tougher guys that don't worry so much about, as you say, "collateral damage."
But I think it's more complicated than that. I think the military worries about using military force, as American armed forces as political assassins, get involved in assassination techniques.
HEMMER: Got it.
HERSH: Operations that are just not for what they're trained.
HEMMER: Seymour, I need a yes or no answer. Up against the window here. 1976, the Ford administration (UNINTELLIGIBLE) assassinations. Is that essentially thrown out the window now?
HERSH: No, because these are military. That's the point.
HEMMER: Got it, got it.
HERSH: That's why it's not really the CIA. It's not intelligence, it's military.
HEMMER: Seymour Hersh, thanks for your time in D.C.
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 16, 2002 - 07:19 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: If you cannot catch them, kill them. That's what the president has reportedly authorized the CIA to do with the world's most wanted terrorists, about two dozen in fact, two dozen suspects said to be on the administration's hit list.
Journalist Seymour Hersh, writing in the current issue of "The New Yorker" magazine, says the terror manhunt has ignited a battle within the Bush administration. Sey Hersh is our guest this morning live in Washington.
Good to see you again -- good morning to you.
SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER": Good morning.
HEMMER: Where is the rub here within the administration?
HERSH: Well, it's really inside the Pentagon. The CIA is involved to the extent that they're providing the intelligence that helps pick out the bad guys -- al Qaeda members, et cetera -- that we want to get rid of, or we want to capture or kill. And the problem is that the real driving force for this is Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon. The CIA is going to provide the intelligence, but the Pentagon is going to provide the man power.
It's going to be military guys -- Special Forces guys, our Delta Force, our SEALs, our special -- our little Army unit that's little- known called the Grey Fox, it's an undercover unit.
HEMMER: Hang on one second there, Seymour. What's the difference between what's being done right now -- and I think the best-case example is the situation in Yemen with that Hellfire missile. Clearly, it looked like a CIA operation, but what you're suggesting is drawing in SEALs changes the focus of the mission, is that correct?
HERSH: I think the actual order to hit comes out of the military. I think the CIA provides the intelligence, but the actual chain-of-command is through the Pentagon. And I think the Pentagon is going to have a very big role in this.
And in my reporting, I found a series of documents that indicated that Donald Rumsfeld, as early as July, began to push very hard on the inside to get the Special Forces command ready to get into what he calls "man hunting." And there was opposition to that. There is opposition to that inside the Special Forces.
HEMMER: What do the Special Forces say about that authority then?
HERSH: Well, basically, their problem is they're worried about what happens -- you know, look, if you have perfect intelligence and you do it right, and you can't capture the guys and it's either capture them or lose them, if you don't kill them -- you know, if you can't get them, I can understand assassination.
But there's a lot of concern about going into third countries where we haven't declared war. We're not -- this is not an Afghanistan we're talking about. We're talking about tracking down guys wherever they are in the Middle East, sending in teams sometimes on their bellies, covert teams to go and take out people individually, capture them if you can, but if you can't, kill them.
The idea is, the documents I have show, that we're not interested in bringing these people into the court of law, no justice system here. We're just going to take them out, and if we grab them, we'll interrogate them somewhere outside of the United States...
HEMMER: That's pretty much speculation at this point, would you not agree? It hasn't happened yet.
HERSH: Actually, I was quoting documents that lined out this policy. This is a policy that is very much in play. This is why they have set up a list, a master list of people that are under sort of the most wanted list.
And the problem for the military is simply that nobody is interested in keeping al Qaeda alive. We're not interested in that at all, but it's a question of what happens, how good is the intelligence going to be?
Eventually, down the line, the fear is -- as we saw in Vietnam when we had a similar assassination program on a much larger scale called Phoenix -- what began as a small program to get individuals soon got a little bit out of control, and before long, you weren't sure of the kind of intelligence you had.
And it seems to me, before you want to start killing people -- this is what some of the people in the military also are arguing -- we really should be trying more to capture them, rather than simply outright getting rid of them, even with the help...
HEMMER: But you know -- but you know, Sey (ph), this is dirty work, and nothing is perfect when it comes to operations like these.
Address this one. You quote Donald Rumsfeld in your article as saying that the military is lacking in agility, lax in tactical surprise -- quote -- "We must be willing to accept the risk associated with a smaller footprint" -- your words, quoting Donald Rumsfeld. Is the military right now willing to accept what you're referring to, and that's collateral damage?
HERSH: I think the problem for Rumsfeld is, he doesn't think that the leadership of the military -- the documents I have, the memos I have from this summer and later this fall, show that there's a sort of a struggle between the civilian leadership and the military leadership.
The civilians think that the too many generals are Clinton-ized (ph). They came to power, they came into high rank during the Clinton years. They're not aggressive enough. But they used the word, "forward-leaning," and I think there's a sense that we want to get tougher guys that don't worry so much about, as you say, "collateral damage."
But I think it's more complicated than that. I think the military worries about using military force, as American armed forces as political assassins, get involved in assassination techniques.
HEMMER: Got it.
HERSH: Operations that are just not for what they're trained.
HEMMER: Seymour, I need a yes or no answer. Up against the window here. 1976, the Ford administration (UNINTELLIGIBLE) assassinations. Is that essentially thrown out the window now?
HERSH: No, because these are military. That's the point.
HEMMER: Got it, got it.
HERSH: That's why it's not really the CIA. It's not intelligence, it's military.
HEMMER: Seymour Hersh, thanks for your time in D.C.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
