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William Cohen on 9/11 Commission, Iraq

Aired April 13, 2004 - 13:10   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.


DALJIT DHALIWAL, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: All right, well, let's talk about the top stories this hour with the former defense secretary, William Cohen, and he joins us for our regular weekly discussion. Many thanks for joining us, Mr. Cohen.
WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: Glad to be here.

DHALIWAL: We have plenty to talk about this hour. Let's start with the 9/11 hearings that have been going on in Washington. How do you think that Louis Freeh and Janet Reno did today?

COHEN: Well, I think they made very direct presentations on behalf of the FBI and the Justice Department. The commission, obviously, is interested in trying to determine what level of communication existed or failed to exist between the FBI and the Justice Department, what was the level of communication within the so-called stove pipes, namely between FBI and CIA. So that you might have agents in Phoenix not being able to communicate up the line to the headquarters in Washington, or indeed with their brethren in New York. And also, not being able to communicate or unwilling to communicate with their counterparts in the CIA. So the commission is looking for the systemic fissures that exist and defects that exist in our overall system, and how we prevent this from taking place in the future, what sort of recommendations can be made. Should there be an MI-5, so to speak, should there be a separate domestic intelligence gathering agency.

Louis Freeh, of course, raised some warning flags on that, but these are the kind of questions that the commission is very interested in pursuing.

DHALIWAL: Well, the hearings have been going on. We've been listening and watching for something like 10 days now. What would you say is the most important piece of information that you've heard to date?

COHEN: Well, the most important thing is, again, the failure to be able to integrate the information. The intelligence agencies are overwhelmed with millions and millions of bits of information coming in, and the question then becomes, how you integrate this information, how you analyze it and then get that to the policy makers so that they can make a determination of how to react. And that is a systemic failure that Condoleezza Rice talked about during the course of her testimony.

There are steps being taken to improve that, but frankly, a lot of fault lines still exist, and hopefully the commission will be in a position to make recommendations to how we correct those deficiencies.

DHALIWAL: Right...

COHEN: I think that is the biggest problem.

DHALIWAL: ... do you think that there's been anything new that's come out of this, that we didn't already know before, weeks or weeks after 9/11?

COHEN: Well, I think the information that came out, obviously, about the memo that was presented or the PDB, the presidential daily brief, that the president had available early August, August 6, in terms of how did he react to that, was it of sufficient clarity for him to then try to heighten awareness, the alertness of all the agencies, or was he more passive in his reaction to it? Those are the kinds of issues that are being analyzed now, and I wouldn't want to prejudge it...

DHALIWAL: Sure.

COHEN: ... in terms of how the commission would come out.

DHALIWAL: All right, well...

COHEN: But that was a new piece of information.

DHALIWAL: All right, well, let's turn our attention to Iraq. Plenty, obviously, has transpired in the last week. How would you characterize what's going on in Iraq right now? Some would say it's an uprising. Do you see it like that?

COHEN: I think we are at a very dangerous point. The dynamic in recent weeks has been moving in favor of the insurgents, those remnants from Saddam Hussein's military, al Qaeda operatives, others. They have been seizing the initiative and putting the coalition forces, certainly, in harm's way in a way that we haven't seen until recently. So the dynamic is very important. They've also adopted a tactic which is designed to try to break the spirit of those coalition partners who are now serving in Iraq. And also, discourage international companies from wanting to invest. So it's pretty clear what the strategy is. Conduct acts of -- military actions against the U.S. and coalition forces, killing the military personnel, and then try to kidnap and extort the governments to leave the service and support for the coalition forces in Iraq, and then you have the added benefit, from their perspective, of discouraging investment.

Now, I see this really in a way that this should serve as a waking-up call and a call to arms on the part of the Iraqi people, because we can't see any kind of a military success story on the part of the coalition forces in the absence of support by the Iraqi people. And the converse is also -- there is a paradox here, because the Iraqi people are not going to be supporting the coalition forces unless they believe that the coalition forces are going to be successful. So what they have to do now is really get the support of the Iraqi people. Tough task, but that's going to be the determining factor.

DHALIWAL: All right, William Cohen, many thanks, thanks for joining us. Unfortunately, we're out of time. Thank you.

END

TO ORDER VIDEOTAPES AND TRANSCRIPTS OF CNN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE THE SECURE ONLINE ORDER FROM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired April 13, 2004 - 13:10:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DALJIT DHALIWAL, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: All right, well, let's talk about the top stories this hour with the former defense secretary, William Cohen, and he joins us for our regular weekly discussion. Many thanks for joining us, Mr. Cohen.
WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: Glad to be here.

DHALIWAL: We have plenty to talk about this hour. Let's start with the 9/11 hearings that have been going on in Washington. How do you think that Louis Freeh and Janet Reno did today?

COHEN: Well, I think they made very direct presentations on behalf of the FBI and the Justice Department. The commission, obviously, is interested in trying to determine what level of communication existed or failed to exist between the FBI and the Justice Department, what was the level of communication within the so-called stove pipes, namely between FBI and CIA. So that you might have agents in Phoenix not being able to communicate up the line to the headquarters in Washington, or indeed with their brethren in New York. And also, not being able to communicate or unwilling to communicate with their counterparts in the CIA. So the commission is looking for the systemic fissures that exist and defects that exist in our overall system, and how we prevent this from taking place in the future, what sort of recommendations can be made. Should there be an MI-5, so to speak, should there be a separate domestic intelligence gathering agency.

Louis Freeh, of course, raised some warning flags on that, but these are the kind of questions that the commission is very interested in pursuing.

DHALIWAL: Well, the hearings have been going on. We've been listening and watching for something like 10 days now. What would you say is the most important piece of information that you've heard to date?

COHEN: Well, the most important thing is, again, the failure to be able to integrate the information. The intelligence agencies are overwhelmed with millions and millions of bits of information coming in, and the question then becomes, how you integrate this information, how you analyze it and then get that to the policy makers so that they can make a determination of how to react. And that is a systemic failure that Condoleezza Rice talked about during the course of her testimony.

There are steps being taken to improve that, but frankly, a lot of fault lines still exist, and hopefully the commission will be in a position to make recommendations to how we correct those deficiencies.

DHALIWAL: Right...

COHEN: I think that is the biggest problem.

DHALIWAL: ... do you think that there's been anything new that's come out of this, that we didn't already know before, weeks or weeks after 9/11?

COHEN: Well, I think the information that came out, obviously, about the memo that was presented or the PDB, the presidential daily brief, that the president had available early August, August 6, in terms of how did he react to that, was it of sufficient clarity for him to then try to heighten awareness, the alertness of all the agencies, or was he more passive in his reaction to it? Those are the kinds of issues that are being analyzed now, and I wouldn't want to prejudge it...

DHALIWAL: Sure.

COHEN: ... in terms of how the commission would come out.

DHALIWAL: All right, well...

COHEN: But that was a new piece of information.

DHALIWAL: All right, well, let's turn our attention to Iraq. Plenty, obviously, has transpired in the last week. How would you characterize what's going on in Iraq right now? Some would say it's an uprising. Do you see it like that?

COHEN: I think we are at a very dangerous point. The dynamic in recent weeks has been moving in favor of the insurgents, those remnants from Saddam Hussein's military, al Qaeda operatives, others. They have been seizing the initiative and putting the coalition forces, certainly, in harm's way in a way that we haven't seen until recently. So the dynamic is very important. They've also adopted a tactic which is designed to try to break the spirit of those coalition partners who are now serving in Iraq. And also, discourage international companies from wanting to invest. So it's pretty clear what the strategy is. Conduct acts of -- military actions against the U.S. and coalition forces, killing the military personnel, and then try to kidnap and extort the governments to leave the service and support for the coalition forces in Iraq, and then you have the added benefit, from their perspective, of discouraging investment.

Now, I see this really in a way that this should serve as a waking-up call and a call to arms on the part of the Iraqi people, because we can't see any kind of a military success story on the part of the coalition forces in the absence of support by the Iraqi people. And the converse is also -- there is a paradox here, because the Iraqi people are not going to be supporting the coalition forces unless they believe that the coalition forces are going to be successful. So what they have to do now is really get the support of the Iraqi people. Tough task, but that's going to be the determining factor.

DHALIWAL: All right, William Cohen, many thanks, thanks for joining us. Unfortunately, we're out of time. Thank you.

END

TO ORDER VIDEOTAPES AND TRANSCRIPTS OF CNN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE THE SECURE ONLINE ORDER FROM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com