[G] Rumsfeld Memo etc, 2003/10/22 - date ================================================================================ March 25, 2004 DEFENSE DEPARTMENT OPERATIONAL BRIEFING [ Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers USAF, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ] Q: Guantanamo Bay. In recent weeks a group of detainees have been released, namely a group of citizens and one Danish citizen -- and released to their home countries and don't face prosecution in their countries. And there's a good deal of concern in this building that they were released, even though they had al Qaeda and Taliban ties and that pretty much they were un-reconstructed terrorists. And in the case of the Danish citizen, the DIA objected to his release, as did SOLIC. And I'm wondering whether you can say with confidence that those prisoners -- no longer prisoners -- no longer pose a threat to the United States, especially since they don't face prosecution. RUMSFELD: We have also released some people that do face prosecution. When I say released, transferred. You know, there's a complex interagency process that has established this situation -- the detainees in Guantanamo and the situation in Iraq. The lawyers have bent over backwards to make sure we did it in a legal and proper way. And we are working with the International Committee of the Red Cross and they review how these people are being treated. And then there's a process that screens these people for possible release or transfer to another country. And in the process they engage in discussion with the other countries. Our first choice is to not have these people, needless to say, and to get them back to the countries where they came from if the countries where they came from will treat them -- manage them in a way that is in the best interests of people who care about the global war on terror. From time to time somebody is deemed to be appropriate for transfer. From time to time they're going to be deemed appropriate for transfer to a country that may decide they want to not prosecute them, but to monitor them in one way or another, and the countries take responsibility for them. Now, have we made a mistake? Yeah. I've mentioned earlier that I do believe we made a mistake in one case and that one of the people that was released earlier may very well have gone back to being a terrorist. And no one likes to make mistakes, but this process made a judgment and it's not easy. They review dozens and dozens and dozens, hundreds of these people, and my guess is -- just like the criminal justice system in the United States, my guess is we probably made a mistake on the other side as well; that is to say, somebody got reviewed and was kept who might very well have gone off and been a model citizen, soldier of the year. But we're doing it honorably, we're doing it legally, and let's just hope and pray that we don't let people loose that do go back and become terrorists. Q: Just a follow-up quickly. I mean, you've said many times this is a war on terrorism. RUMSFELD: It is. Q: And if your own experts in DIA and SOLIC would object specifically to the case of the Dane from his release, I mean, how we can be confident or you can be confident that he doesn't pose a threat, even though he's not -- RUMSFELD: It may be. I don't get involved in this process. There's too many people and I'm not a lawyer and they do their best. I would guess that there are very -- (chuckles) -- few people that get dealt with where there's unanimity that they definitely shouldn't go or they definitely should go -- be transferred. And there's always going to be -- it's like a jury. They sit there and they make judgments, and someone votes this way and someone votes that way, and they do their best. And my impression is they're doing a pretty darn good job, and let's just hope and pray that folks just don't go back out there and kill more innocent men, women and children. GEN. MYERS: I think it's fair to say that the countries that get these people -- that our view of them is not all that different from the country that's getting them, and I think we generally agree on the type of person they're getting. And these countries have responsibilities as well to ensure that these people, whether they're put in court or put in jail or whatever happens to them, that they're watched in such a way that they can't perpetrate more horror. RUMSFELD: The things we look for is not punishment, as you know. This isn't law enforcement. These people didn't rob a bank or steal a car. What we look for is, first and foremost, ought they to be off the street so they aren't going to go kill more people? And second, have we gotten all the information out of them through the interrogation process -- the interagency interrogation process -- that we can to learn as much as possible about their friends and associates who were involved in killing people and terrorizing? And at some point they move from one tier into another tier, and at some point they move from that tier into a tier that looks like we might be able to pass them off on someone else or let them loose. I mean, some people get ill and they get taken out, some people, everyone just says maybe these people could be released now because they don't seem to be a threat. All right. Thank you very much. Q: Thank you. * * * March 15, 2004 DoD Press Release No. 180-04 TRANSFER OF AFGHANI AND PAKISTANI DETAINEES COMPLETE http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2004/nr20040315-0462.html The Department of Defense announced today it transferred 23 Afghan and three Pakistani detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for release. The decision to transfer or release a detainee is based on many factors, including whether the detainee is of further intelligence value to the United States and whether he is believed to pose a threat to the United States. There is a process to review the status of detainees. We make a determination about the detention and release of a detainee based on the best information and evidence we have at the time. The circumstances in which detainees are apprehended can be ambiguous, and many of them are highly skilled in concealing the truth. The process of evaluation and detention is not free of risk--at least one detainee has gone back to the fight. During the course of the war on terrorism, the department expects there will be other transfers or releases of detainees. Because of operational and security considerations, no further details can be provided. Currently, 119 detainees have been released and 12 others have been transferred for continued detention (four to the Saudi Arabian government, one to the Spanish government and seven to the Russian government). As a result of today’s release, there are approximately 610 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. * * * March 9, 2004 1:32 p.m. EST DEFENSE DEPARTMENT OPERATIONAL UPDATE BRIEFING http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040309-secdef0523.html [ Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, U.S. Marine Corps, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ] RUMSFELD: James? Q: The Department of Defense has transferred five British detainees from Guantanamo Bay back to the British government, and in return the British government has assured the U.S. that these detainees will not pose a threat to U.S. security or the allies of the United States. But they're going to go back now and be subject to British law, and according to all the British legal experts we talked to, there seems to be a consensus that it's highly likely they may be released. Is that going to be a problem for you since you've held these people for two years for the very reason to make sure that they didn't pose a threat? RUMSFELD: It's certainly not a problem for me; it's a question for our country, and the country -- government of the United States has addressed it. There apparently, as I recall, were nine U.K. detainees; I think five or four -- what did you say, five? Q: Well, five have been transferred. SEC RUMSFELD: Five are being today transferred, as you indicated. Four are considered to be in a different category and they're not being transferred. What will happen? We'll find out over time. We'll see what happens. We've transferred -- you never know for sure in life, but our government made a considered judgment that it was appropriate to transfer these individuals to the government of the United Kingdom on the basis that you've described. Q: If released, do you believe they would pose a threat? SEC RUMSFELD: The people who have analyzed these individuals and interrogated them and looked at it and processed them and considered this have come to a conclusion that this was the appropriate thing to do on the part of the United States, and therefore we're doing it. Q: And why did it take two years to come to that conclusion? SEC RUMSFELD: Oh, it doesn't take two years, it takes -- that's not a good way to phrase it. It sounds as though you sat down -- you scooped them up in Afghanistan, sat down and spent two years trying to figure out what do with them. That's just not the case. The goal was to take these people off a battlefield and keep them away from killing other people. And that's been accomplished. That's a good thing for two years. That's not a bad thing. Second, the goal was to interrogate them, find out what do they know; are there other terrorists running around that we could learn information about? Do you they know where caches of weapons are? Do they know information about techniques or approaches? So they get interrogated for a couple of years. Then at some point you say we think we got what we need out of this crowd -- five people -- and let's move them along. Let's -- we don't want to keep everybody at Guantanamo. We've moved I don't know how many -- 105 I think so far, counting these folks -- and there will be more. Of the 105 some have been transferred -- I don't know, these five and I guess 12 others were transferred into the custody of the governments that they carry passports for, and the others were just let go; they were on their own recognizance. We do know already, I believe -- at least, let me put it this way: I've been told by senior people in this department that of the people that have been released we know of at least one who has gone back to being a terrorist. So life isn't perfect. (Laughs.) In other words, you can make mistakes in evaluating these people. Let's hope that none of these do. (...) RUMSFELD: (...) Pam? Q: You mentioned earlier about a terrorist who had gone back to being a terrorist. Could you tell us what country he's from, what organization, and what activities constitute being a terrorist? RUMSFELD: I can't. I can't. Q: Could you at least describe the activities? RUMSFELD: I can't -- Q: Because I think we're going to go back and report this, but I'd like to have a little bit more information. RUMSFELD: I can't give you any more information because I don't -- I've forgotten. I was told one day that this happened. And why don't you talk to Larry about it and see if we know whether it's public or not. But it has happened. Q: But he's not one of the 12 that was returned to those countries to be held, he's one of the ones who was set free -- RUMSFELD: I don't even know that. I know he was in the total of the 100-plus, 105 or whatever it is. Whether he was in the 12 or the 88, I don't know. * * * February 19, 2004 1:42 p.m. EST SPECIAL DEFENSE DEPARTMENT BRIEFING OPERATIONAL UPDATE [ Deputy Director for Regional Operations, Joint Staff, Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Public Affairs, Lawrence DiRita ] (...) DIRITA: Nick? Q: Larry, the British government has announced that five of the Britons detained in Guantanamo Bay will be leaving in the next few weeks. Can you say what it is that finally unlocked this after what seems like months of negotiations and why it is only five, rather than the nine, which I -- the full nine, which I think the British government was pitching for? And what's going to happen to the four remaining? DIRITA: Well, the -- first of all, let me just zoom out a bit. The -- we've said that we're engaged with quite a number of countries on developing agreements to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo. The Secretary spoke last Friday quite clearly that we don't wish to detain people in Guantanamo if we don't need to detain them. And we are working with a large number of countries on citizens or nationals from their countries as to what kind of arrangements can be made for us to return them. In the case of the British, there was an agreement established for the repatriation of a handful of the detainees that are in Guantanamo. I don't have details on the specifics, nor would it be our place to comment on the specific -- the terms of that agreement. I would defer to the British government to talk about it -- how they choose to talk about it -- how it chooses to talk about it. And each of these cases is evaluated on its own merits. Each of the individuals under review for return to another country is evaluated on its own merits. And to try and evaluate why X number instead of X plus Y was returned is just sort of an unnecessary exercise. These five were determined to be appropriate for transfer. The British government has accepted that responsibility, and we're going to transfer them at some point soon. Q: Are these guys being essentially freed or turned over to them for incarceration and further questioning for possible -- DIRITA: I did not see the British statement. We are turning them over to the British government, and the British government is going to take further actions from here. And again, I would just refer you to the British government. (...) Q: On the Brits remaining in Gitmo, five are being released, soon; four remain. DIRITA: Well, I don't know that. There may be others. I just don't know the total number of British in Guantanamo. Q: The published number is nine, but maybe there are more. The ones who remain -- DIRITA: There was a report that nine were being considered. I'm not sure that's the same as saying that there are nine at Guantanamo. I just simply don't know. Q: Of the remaining, is it true that one of them has been identified to possibly go before a military commission? One or two? DIRITA: Here's what I do know. The president made a determination on six individuals last July, two of whom were British. And I'm not -- I don't know enough of the people in the population down there to be able to crosswalk that against who's been under consideration for release. I would again just refer you to the British statement today, which I have not seen. Q: Well, two of the -- those two are not among the five being released. Can you -- DIRITA: Are you asking me or telling me? Q: I'm asking you. DIRITA: That's correct. Q: So you can't characterize the other people that don't fall under the two who have been identified? DIRITA: No, all I've said is that there were six people that the president made a reason to believe -- determination with respect to military commissions. Two of those were British citizens. But beyond that, I can't connect them to the number that have been under -- Q: You understand that I'm trying to figure out why the others are not being released. DIRITA: Yeah. No, I -- you're -- appreciate that. Yeah. As I said, each situation is evaluated on its own merits, each case. And in this particular case, five individuals were determined to be, you know, eligible for repatriation to Great Britain, and that's what we're going to do. I just can't speak to the details on who else may have been under consideration. Q: How soon would they be released? DIRITA: I think in the immediate period of time ahead. I just don't -- I don't know how long it will take to work through the sort of transportation modalities and all that stuff. The agreement's been made, is what I understand. Q: Just a housekeeping point, if you're about to wind up. Since the Secretary is not briefing as often as he did before -- he was briefing at least once a week before, and sometimes more often -- could we have these more often, perhaps on a regular basis, once or twice a week -- DIRITA: As you know, we work very hard to provide the information that's necessary for rapid disclosure of necessary -- Q: No, but if you could, it's good to address issues other than Iraq that come up. DIRITA: Sure. Q: So if we could have -- DIRITA: We'll try to maintain our typically high standard of information. Q: (Off mike.) Q: There was a time when there were actually regular Pentagon briefings every Tuesday, Thursday -- (cross talk) -- DIRITA: Is that right? Q: Yeah. (Cross talk.) It was back before the turn of the century. DIRITA: (Laughs.) Yeah. That was sort of a last century model. (Cross talk, laughter.) We're transforming this place. We're transforming this place. (Laughter, cross talk.) Thank you very much. Q: Come back. Q: Thank you. DIRITA: I'm here every day, working for you. * * * February 13, 2004 DoD BRIEFING ON DETAINEE OPERATIONS AT GUANTANAMO BAY (Participating were Paul Butler, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict, and Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander, Joint Task Force Guantanamo.) Bryan Whitman [deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs (media operations)]: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us this afternoon. As most of you know, the secretary of Defense is in Miami today and has just spoken to the Miami Chamber of Commerce. And he touched upon the importance and the progress that's being made in the global war on terror and discussed the importance of our detainee operations that are taking place at Guantanamo Bay. And to provide some more information on that, because there has been some interest in it lately, we have two individuals: Paul Butler, who is the Principal Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict; and Major General Geoffrey Miller, who is the Commanding General for Joint Task Force Guantanamo. And they're here today to talk to you about the importance of the Guantanamo facility and bring you up to date on some of our processes at that facility. So with that, I'll turn it over to these two. Butler: Good afternoon. As the secretary indicated earlier today in his speech, the key insight I think into our policy at Guantanamo is that we remain in an active war with al Qaeda, the Taliban and its affiliated terrorist organizations. And I think it helps just to remind ourselves on how we got here a little bit. And that is that in 1996, Osama bin Laden issued a public fatwa declaring war on the United States. In February 1998 he issued another public fatwa and said -- in which he said that it was the absolute obligation of his followers to kill Americans, civilian or military, wherever they could be found. After that followed the attempted millennium plot in 1999. Before that al Qaeda attacked our embassies in East Africa and killed over 200 people and injured close to 5,000. In October 2000, al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole, a warship in Aden, where they killed 17 service members and injured 39 others. Al Qaeda then made a recruiting video which celebrated that attack and was used as a recruitment tool for al Qaeda operatives. And then, of course, there was 9/11, where close to 3,000 people died in one day on American soil; something that hadn't happened since Pearl Harbor in World War II; something that hadn't happened on the continental United States since the battle of Antietam; and an act that destroyed a building at the center of American power, which hadn't taken place since the War of 1812. Of course, the president responded pursuant to his duties as commander in chief. Congress endorsed the use of force in self-defense against those responsible for September 11th, and NATO and the U.N. Security Council both recognized 9/11 as an attack upon the United States. In November of 2001, President Bush stated that, quote, "International terrorists have carried out attacks on the United States on a scale that has created a state of armed conflict that requires the use of United States armed forces." Close quote. But unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the story. The war goes on. On December 22nd, 2001, there was an attempted bombing of a commercial transatlantic flight by shoe-bomber Richard Reid linked to al Qaeda. In April 2002, there was an al Qaeda firebombing of a synagogue in Djerba Tunisia, which killed 19 people and injured 22. In June 2002, al Qaeda was likely responsible for a bomb that exploded outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killing 11 persons and injuring 51 others. In October 2002, there was a recording attributed to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, saying, "God willing, we will continue targeting the keys of the American economy." On October 6, 2002, al Qaeda directed a suicide attack on the French oil tanker MV Limburg off the coast of Yemen that killed one and injured four. On October 8, 2002, al Qaeda gunmen attacked U.S. soldiers on Failaka Island in Kuwait, killing one Marine and wounding another. On October 12, 2002, al Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah bombed the nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, which killed more than 200 international tourists and injured about 300. On November 28th, 2002, in Mombasa, Kenya, a vehicle containing three suicide bombers drove into the front of the Paradise Hotel, killing 15 persons and wounding 40 others. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility. That same day, two anti-aircraft missiles were launched, but missed downing a Boeing 757 taking off from Mombasa on route to Israel. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for that as well. On May 12th in 2003, in Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda suicide bombers attacked three residential compounds for foreign workers, killing 34, including 10 U.S. citizens. On August 5th, 2003, a car bomb exploded outside the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia, killing 10 and wounding 150. Once again, al Qaeda- affiliated group Jemaah Islamiyah was responsible. Between February and October of 2003, bin Laden issued further tapes urging his followers to take up jihad and stating, "We stress the importance of the martyrdom operations against the enemy, operations that inflicted harm on the United States." Between September 2003 and December 2003, Taliban militants stepped up the insurgency in southern and eastern provinces in Afghanistan, including attacks on innocent civilians and coalition forces. On November 15th, 2003, two suicide truck bombs exploded outside the Neve Shalom and Beth Israel Synagogues in Istanbul, killing 25 and wounding 300 more. An al Qaeda-related group claimed responsibility. On November 20th, 2003, two suicide truck bombs exploded near the British consulate and the HSBC Bank in Istanbul, killing 25, including the British consul general, and injuring more than 309. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility. In November 2003, Taliban bombings killed U.S. and Romanian soldiers and several Afghan civilians. In November 2003, al Qaeda also struck again in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 17 and injuring more than 100. In January 2004, Taliban bombings in Afghanistan killed soldiers from the United Kingdom and Canada. And since August of 2003, 11 U.S. soldiers have died in the war in Afghanistan. This is not even a full, comprehensive listing of all the attacks but surely indicates that we remain at war with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. So when you put it in that context, what we're doing at Guantanamo Bay is not that surprising. We are holding enemy combatants in a global war on terrorism for security reasons, to prevent them from returning to the battlefield and injuring American soldiers and civilians -- and civilians throughout the world. !!! So the law of armed conflict governs what we're doing here. Some people ask us, well, what about the Geneva Convention? And we believe that we -- our policies are treating the detainees entirely consistent with the framework of the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention requires that combatants in a war fight according to certain rules, and there are several reasons why the enemy combatants at Guantanamo are not entitled to the full range of protection under the Geneva Conventions. !!! First of all, neither al Qaeda nor the Taliban were state parties to the Geneva Conventions. Second of all, they did not fight in uniform or subject to a clear chain of command. But most importantly, the Geneva Conventions were designed in large part to protect civilian populations, and al Qaeda, the Taliban and its affiliates, as you can see by that litany of events, deliberately violates those rules. Not only do they attack civilian populations, but they blend in with civilian populations, thereby increasing the possibility of civilian casualties. If the Geneva Conventions are to be enforceable law, there need to be incentives built in. And what kind of incentives would we send if we allow the full treatment under the Geneva Conventions to be extended to enemy combatants who deliberately and purposely violate them? However, we are treating the detainees at Guantanamo Bay humanely and consistent with the conditions under customary international law for humane treatment. The detainees are getting three meals a day that meet cultural dietary requirements, they have adequate shelter and clothing, the opportunity to worship, including copies of the Koran and prayer beads, the means to send and receive mail, reading materials, and excellent medical care. There is also a thorough process to determine who comes to Guantanamo. The secretary described this in his speech a little bit, but I'd like to give a little bit more detail. First of all, there is an elaborate screening process that takes place in the field in Afghanistan. Over 10,000 detainees were taken into some form of custody; less than 800 have been brought to Guantanamo Bay. First, in a hostile environment, soldiers detain those who are posing a threat to U.S. and coalition forces based on available information or direct combat. After an initial period of detention, the individual is sent to a centralized holding area. At that time, a military screening team at the central holding area reviews all available information, including interviews with the detainees. With assistance from other U.S. government officials on the ground, including military lawyers, intelligence officers and federal law enforcement officials, and considering all relevant information, including the facts from capture and detention, the threat posed by the individual and the intelligence and law enforcement value of the individual, the military screening team assesses whether the detainee should continue to be detained and whether transfer to Guantanamo is warranted. A general officer designated by the commander of Central Command then makes a third assessment of those enemy combatants who are recommended for transfer to Guantanamo Bay. The general officer reviews recommendations from the central holding area screening teams and determines whether enemy combatants should be transferred to Guantanamo. In determining whether a detainee should be transferred, the combatant commander considers the threat posed by the detainee, his seniority within hostile forces, possible intelligence that may be gained from the detainee through questioning, and any other relevant factors. Once that determination is made, Department of Defense officials in Washington also review the proposed detainee for transfer to Guantanamo. An internal Department of Defense review panel, including legal advisors and individuals from policy and the Joint Staff, assess the information and ask questions about whether the detainee should be sent. There is also -- that's part of the process. Now, what happens once the detainee arrives at Guantanamo? Once the detainee is at Guantanamo, there is a very detailed and elaborate process for gauging the threat posed by each detainee to determine whether, notwithstanding his status as an enemy combatant, he can be released or transferred to the custody of a foreign government consistent with our security interests. Each individual case is reviewed by an integrated team of interrogators, analysts, behavioral scientists and regional experts. Individual detainee cases are assessed according to the threat posed to the national security interests of the United States and our allies. Threat assessments are based on all available information from interagency sources and are provided to Southern Command for review. During questioning of the detainees, new information is constantly revealed, confirmed and analyzed to determine its reliability. Unfortunately, many detainees are deceptive and prefer to conceal their identities and actions. Some of you may be familiar with a document called the Manchester Manual. This was a document that was picked up in a search in Manchester, England and has surfaced in various other venues, including in Afghanistan. It's really the al Qaeda manual, and in it is a large section which teaches al Qaeda operatives counterinterrogation techniques: how to lie, how to minimize your role. The commander of Southern Command or his designee then makes a recommendation in each individual case based on the threat the detainee poses to the United States as well as intelligence value or law enforcement interest. Those recommendations are then sent up to the Pentagon, where a group -- a panel of experts from the Pentagon -- from Policy, from Joint Staff, from the Office of General Counsel -- collect that information and make a recommendation on whether the detainee should be released, transferred to the custody of a foreign government or continue to be detained. Those recommendations are then sent out to an interagency experts group, composed of -- not only of the Department of Defense, but the Department of Justice, including the FBI; the CIA; the Department of State; the Department of Homeland Security; and NSC staff. Each one of the interagency experts votes on the recommendation and the entire package is then sent up to the Secretary of Defense or his designee for review. A decision is then made on whether somebody will be released, transferred or remain in detention. There are two components down in Guantanamo that actually do this work. There is General Miller, the commander of JTF-GTMO, and his military intelligence teams that are debriefing the detainees for intelligence purposes. There is also a separate team called the Criminal Investigative Task Force, which is made up of components of Army CID, Air Force OSI, Navy NCIS, FBI and other law enforcement agencies, who also evaluate each detainee for threat and whether there is law enforcement interest. I'd like to talk a little bit now about the process for transferring detainees. As you know, there have been over 80 detainees who have been released. There have been now five who have been transferred, including four to Saudi Arabia and recently one to Spain. Various factors must be considered before any decision to transfer to a foreign government is reached, including the threat posed by the detainee, any law enforcement interest in him or intelligence interest in him, and whether we can reach appropriate transfer agreements with the foreign government. This is a complex process, and we're actively involved in negotiations with many different countries about transferring their detainees to their custody. But we want -- we're asking foreign governments to take responsibility for these detainees, to provide with assurances that we think will address the risks that these detainees pose once they're transferred to the custody of the foreign government. And that's because there are very dangerous people at Guantanamo. Enemy combatants at Guantanamo include not only rank-and-file jihadists who took up arms against the United States, but also senior al Qaeda operatives and leaders and Taliban leaders. For example, enemy combatants captured during the course of hostilities include terrorists linked to most major al Qaeda attacks, including the East Africa embassy bombings and the USS Cole attack; terrorists who taught or received training on arms and explosives, surveillance and interrogation resistance techniques at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere; terrorists who continue to express their commitment to kill Americans and conduct suicide attacks if released; terrorists who have sworn personal allegiance to Osama bin Laden; terrorists linked to several al Qaeda operational plans, including possible targeting of specific facilities in the United States. For example, we have an individual in Guantanamo with links to a financier of the 9/11 plot, who attempted to enter the United States through Orlando, Florida, in August 2001. Phone records suggest that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta was also at the Orlando airport that day. This individual was later captured in Pakistan after fleeing Tora Bora. There are two individuals associated with senior al Qaeda members who were working on remotely detonated explosive devices for use against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. There's a member of an al Qaeda-supported terrorist cell in Afghanistan that targeted civilians, especially journalists and foreign aid workers, and who is responsible for a grenade attack on a foreign journalist's automobile. There's an al Qaeda member who was plotting to attack oil tankers in the Persian Gulf using explosive-laden fishing boats. There's an individual who fought with an al Qaeda-supported terrorist cell in Afghanistan, personally establishing reconnaissance and ambush positions around the Kandahar air base. There's an individual who served as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and escorted him to Tora Bora, Afghanistan, following the fall of Jalalabad. There's an al Qaeda member who served as explosives trainer for al Qaeda and designed a prototype shoe bomb for destroying airplanes and a magnetic mine for attacking ships. There's an individual who trained al Qaeda associates in the use of explosives and worked on a plot to use cell phones to detonate bombs. And there's an individual who served as an al Qaeda translator and managed operating funds for al Qaeda and who helped stockpile weapons for use against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. These examples are merely illustrative, they're not comprehensive. But they demonstrate the importance in maintaining the security of the United States by holding dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield. Now, the intelligence -- I would like to talk a little bit about the intelligence that we're gaining from these individuals because that's a substantial part of the mission at Guantanamo. And perhaps General Miller could address that a little bit later. But these individuals are providing us important information, which General Miller likes to refer to as "the golden threads of intelligence" that help us understand the al Qaeda network and to help us defend ourselves against them. Now, I mentioned there are three basic ways in which the enemy combatants are categorized down there: those who will potentially be eligible for release, those who will be eligible for transfer to their foreign governments, and those who will remain in continued detention. As you may know, for those who will remain in continued detention, the Secretary announced some additional procedures that we are going to implement, and that is an Administrative Review Panel. And this will be a panel that will meet annually -- it will meet more than annually. It will review each detainee's case annually to determine whether that detainee continues to pose a threat to the United States. The detainee will have the opportunity to appear in person before that panel. The detainee's foreign government will have the opportunity to submit information on the detainee's behalf. And the panel will consider all of the information, including intelligence information gained on the detainee and the information presented by the detainee and his government, and to make an independent recommendation about whether the detainee should be held. And with that, I think we'll take any questions that you might have. Q: Will a detainee have the right to have a lawyer when he appears before the review panel? And also, if people being held in Guantanamo pose such a threat, why not bring them to a speedy trial on charges and give them lawyers? Butler: Well, it's important to remember that military commissions are not the reason that people are being held at Guantanamo. As I stated, under the laws of war, we have a right to hold enemy combatants who represent a threat to the United States and its forces off the battlefield. Military commissions are designed to punish those who have committed war crimes during the course of a war. And we have a process -- there has been an appointing authority appointed. And I won't speak to the military commissions in too much detail, but that process will take its own course. What we're doing is we're reviewing people to determine whether they're still a threat. And if they are determined to be a threat, then we will continue to hold them until such time that they're not a threat anymore. Q: How about lawyers when they appear before the review panel? Butler: The details of that haven't been worked out. There will be someone available to help the detainee understand what the process and procedures are, what the board is, but it's unclear yet what, exactly, the details of the panel will be. Q: But as of right now, you haven't decided that this person is entitled to a lawyer when he comes before the review panel. Butler: That's correct. Q: Do you know when the first of these boards would meet, approximately? Butler: Not yet. I'm not prepared to talk about that now. But it's under active review. Q: But I mean within the next year, within the next six months? Butler: I just can't answer that question right now. I don't know. Q: Could you say a little bit more about the makeup of the panel, who it is going to involve, who makes the appointments? Is this something that's going to be entirely within the Department of Defense or within the administration, or will there be any kind of independent elements in this? Butler: Again, that's all under active consideration now and I don't have any further information on the composition of the panel, who will appoint it and who will be on it. Q: Can you say whether the panel's decision will be final, or is it subject to review in other places in the administration? Butler: Well, the panel will make a recommendation. Q: To whom? Butler: That's still under consideration, but most likely to the Secretary. Q: And so this decision is not final. Butler: Again, the details of the panel have not yet been worked out. Q: Could you just step back a minute and help us understand why you're here today, why the Secretary's making this speech, why, suddenly out of the clear, blue sky, so much information today about what you're doing, but yet not final information about the panel? You put it out there and you're telling us, but you're clearly undecided on any number of things. Why are you telling everybody all of this today? Butler: Well, there's been a lot of interest in what we're doing at Guantanamo, and there have been some events in the recent past, including the transfer of the one detainee to Spain, and so we thought it was an appropriate time to share some of the information about the vigorous procedures down here that we're using at Guantanamo. There is an elaborate process. Detainees are not in a legal black hole. There is an enormous amount of time spent scrutinizing each individual case through various agencies of the government to help us determine who these people are. We are not interested in holding anyone for one more day than we have to. We want to evaluate them. If we can reach the conclusion that they're no longer a threat, we will release them. If we believe that we can reach transfer agreements with foreign governments who will take responsibility for them so that they’re no longer a threat to us or to their populations, we want to do that. So we are -- we have sensed the interest in Guantanamo and we are responding to make sure that everybody is clear on what our policies are. Q: Do you have any information that indicates anyone released from Guantanamo Bay and returned to wherever they came from has actually returned to the battlefield, so to speak, and has again joined the war on terrorism? Butler: That's a -- it's a very important concern. I'm not going to go any further than that. I don't want to get into areas that involve intelligence. Needless to say -- I mentioned the Manchester Manual. When you have people that were picked up in a chaotic war, who are often trained on how to resist interrogations, who you don't have always tremendous amounts of information on before they come into your custody, you are always concerned that -- you make sure that you have full information on them before they're released. Q: Is the establishment of this panel part of a concerted effort by the U.S. military to get these detainees into the hands of foreign governments; get them out of U.S. hands and limit the numbers that are being detained at Guantanamo Bay? Butler: No, I don't think so. The panel is designed to ensure that there is continued process that addresses the concerns that we all share that nobody be there any longer than they have to be. And if through our present procedures, the elaborate procedures that I just talked about, the detainee has not been released, these are additional procedures to make sure that -- the war -- the end of this war, of course -- I think the secretary has alluded to this is uncertain. And one thing we can say is it's not over now, but over time we want to make sure that, even perhaps if the war ends in stages, that there's constant review of these detainees to make sure that nobody's there any longer than they have to be. Q: Is that an acknowledgement -- Whitman: We've got time for about one or two more. And it's not often we get General Miller here, so if you have one for General Miller it might be a good time to ask him. Q: Could I just follow with one question? Is that an acknowledgement by the Pentagon that the processes so far established -- established to date, are not adequate to address those concerns of people being held too long? Butler: Not at all. We have a certain set of processes, and as I think I mentioned to you, they're very vigorous, very elaborate. People spend enormous amounts of time scrutinizing each one of these detainees. This is just an additional procedure to once again ensure that we want to do the right thing here. We want to make sure we're holding people who are a threat and releasing people who we think no longer pose a threat. Q: A number of these folks have been in custody two years or more now. Do they lose their intelligence value? Certainly, my two-year-old knowledge on things is dated. I mean, what kind of insight can you get on al Qaeda and their operatives? Butler: Thank you -- sir? Miller: There are -- they've had enemy combatants here at JTF Guantanamo -- some for almost two years, some for as little as two months. And so as we go about determining their intelligence value and their threat, we go through this very thorough process. There are three types of intelligence: technical intelligence -- that what the enemy combatant was doing when he was captured, if he had a weapon; and then there is operational and strategic intelligence, that allows us to better understand how terrorists are recruited, how terrorism is sustained, how the financial networks power terrorism. And so we developed this intelligence and are continuing to develop this intelligence. We continue to get extraordinarily valuable intelligence from the detainees who are at Guantanamo. Q: So there is an acknowledgment that if these folks have served their useful time, you're trying to figure out a way to get rid of them? Miller: It's my responsibility to make an assessment and recommendation on the detainee's intelligence value and their risk. We do that every day and that process is ongoing. Some are getting very close for us to make a recommendation; others, who are enormously dangerous and have enormous -- intelligence of enormous value, are still in this process. Q: General, is there construction under way for a more permanent facility to house the more hard-core detainees once we seek an eventual release of the detainees? Miller: There is another camp facility that's under construction. It is our interrogation facility which will replace the temporary facilities that we've been using for the last year and one half. Q: How much of a number of detainees will that facility house? And -- Miller: That facility -- I'm sorry. That facility -- Q: And why the construction? Miller: That facility can house up to 100 enemy combatants who we will conduct interrogation upon. And to be frank with you, we're replacing interrogation facilities that were trailers with better facilities that allow us to more effectively and rapidly do this job of interrogation. Q: Is it a housing facility then or is it more strictly just for interrogation? Miller: It is a interrogation facility. But we can house an enemy combatant there to accelerate and help us in the interrogation process. Q: Mr. Butler, why aren't some of the al Qaeda people you described being charged criminally? Because previously the U.S. government has prosecuted al Qaeda operatives, like the guy you mentioned who was at the U.S. airport shortly before 9/11? Butler: All of these detainees were captured in the context of the global war on terrorism. They are enemy combatants in the war. There is a decision process in place, an independent appointing authority, who will eventually make decisions on who should be charged for war crimes. But the great insight of the president, and the secretary, and others in the administration, I think, after 9/11, was that we are at war now, and that the criminal justice model, although very important to fighting the war on terrorism, is not the sole tools right now, and therefore, enemy combatants are being held for security reasons. And again, the appointing authority will decide who is charged. Whitman: We'll take one last one, if we could. Somebody that hasn't had one. Q: Can you tell us about what Camp Echo is, how it differs from the existing Camp Delta facility? And in connection to that, how much is the overall operation costing? Miller: Camp Echo is our facility where we hold the pre-commissions detainees. Once the president has decided to move forward in this process, we separate these enemy combatants from the general population and move them into Camp Echo, in that facility, to allow us to separate them, plus, to allow their lawyers, when they're appointed, to have access to the enemy combatants to hold private conversations. Q: (Off mike.) -- just like Camp Delta but separate? Or is it a different layout? Well, it sounded almost like it might be a suite; there's a room for lawyers, I read somewhere. What does it look like? Miller: There are individual buildings, so the enemy combatant is in his own cell with an area where the lawyer may come in and have a private discussion with him. Whitman: All right, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Q: And the second part was how much is it costing? Whitman: Who did he ask? I guess the assistant secretary? Butler: I'm sorry, I don't have that information. Miller: We don't normally discuss the operational costs of the JTF. It's an ongoing operational unit. Q: Thank you. Miller: But I will tell you we're a great buy! * * * January 29, 2004 DoD Press Release No. 057-04 TRANSFER OF JUVENILE DETAINEES COMPLETED http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2004/nr20040129-0934.html The Department of Defense announced today that it transferred three juvenile detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They have been released to their home country today. Defense Department senior leadership, in consultation with other senior U.S. government officials, determined that the juvenile detainees no longer posed a threat to our nation, that they have no further intelligence value and that they are not going to be tried by the U.S. government for any crimes. As with all detainees, these juveniles were considered enemy combatants that posed a threat to U.S. security, and their transfer for release was contingent upon this determination. The juveniles were removed from the battlefield to prevent further harm to U.S. forces and to themselves. Two of the three juvenile detainees were captured during U.S. and allied forces raids on Taliban camps. One juvenile detainee was captured while trying to obtain weapons to fight American forces. Age is not a determining factor in detention. We detain enemy combatants who engaged in armed conflict against our forces or provided support to those fighting against us. After medical tests determined all three juveniles were under the age of 16, the juveniles were housed in a separate detention facility modified to meet the special needs of juveniles. In this facility, they were not restricted in the same manner as adult detainees and underwent assessments from medical, behavioral, educational, intelligence and detention specialists to address their unique needs while detained at Guantanamo. With the assistance of non-government organizations (NGOs), the juveniles will be resettled in their home country. It was our goal to return them to an environment where they have an opportunity to reintegrate into civil society. While at Guantanamo, every effort was made to provide the juvenile detainees a secure environment free from the influences of the older detainees, as well as providing for their special physical and emotional care. While in detention, these juveniles were provided the opportunity to learn math, as well as reading and writing in their native language. Each took part in at least a portion of the opportunity to better themselves through education and participated in courses to improve their literacy and social skills. The juveniles also participated in daily physical exercise and sports games. We are concerned al Qaida or Taliban sympathizers may threaten the safety of these juveniles. For this reason, we will not provide their names publicly or further details regarding their capture and release. As we have stated in the past, the evaluation of the detainees is a time- consuming and deliberate process. To date, 87 detainees have been released. Four other detainees have been transferred to the Saudi Arabian government for continued detention. We stand firm on our commitment to release detainees when we are able to determine that they no longer pose a threat to our nation, that they are of no intelligence value and that they are not appropriate for criminal prosecution. * * * January 13, 2004 DEFENSE DEPARTMENT OPERATIONAL BRIEFING Presenter: Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (Participating was Gen. Peter Pace, Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff.) (...) Q: Mr. Secretary, when Saddam Hussein was captured, it was said that he was talkative, but not particularly forthcoming, and in fact, somewhat defiant. In the month since his capture, has he provided U.S. interrogators with any useful information about WMD [weapons of mass destruction], the insurgency or anything else in regard to his regime? And what was behind the decision by the Pentagon to declare him a prisoner of war? And does that in any way tie the U.S. administration's hands in turning him over to the Iraqis eventually? SEC. RUMSFELD: Wow. First of all, I'm not going to characterize his interrogations. It seems to me that he's a very high-value person in terms of intelligence, and we've asked the Central Intelligence Agency to manage the interrogations. They're doing it. They're doing a good job. And how we characterize what he said or what he has done or what value there has been, it seems to me I have asked George to do, and he's doing it. And we'll leave it there. The second part of your question, on the EPW [enemy prisoner of war] issue, let me -- I have commented on this a couple of times, and I think my comments will be pretty much the same, that there are technical legal issues involved here. The policy people make the decisions, and the legal interagency group has been, obviously, thinking this through. And if you think about Saddam Hussein's circumstance, the -- he had a potential to be prosecuted for activities against the Iraqi people. He has a potential to be prosecuted for his actions against the Kuwaiti people. He has a potential for being prosecuted against the Iranian people -- for his actions against the Iranian people, where he used gas. He has -- he is, as a military person, an enemy prisoner of war for the period up to May 1st. And he has the potential for being prosecuted for activities after May 1st involving the insurgency and the killing of coalition troops. What the announcement has been, as I understand it, by the lawyers -- or a conclusion by the lawyers -- and I do not know myself whether it has been addressed at the policy level, but the lawyers have concluded -- probably properly, I assume properly, that he should be characterized as an EPW, enemy prisoner of war. Now -- full stop. However, his status can be reviewed at any time, more than once. And so as additional information or as decisions are made, that may be either changed or amplified. But at the moment, you know, he is, I believe, being characterized as an enemy prisoner of war. The third part of your question is could that in any way affect the possibility of the Iraqis being involved in his trial or his prosecution, and the answer is no. I mean, the reality is that the president has said, and the decision has been made, that he believes the Iraqi people need to be involved in that process in whatever way is ultimately decided. Q: Is it the intent of the U.S. -- of the Bush administration to have a military trial, a U.S. military trial of Saddam Hussein or to turn him over to the Iraqis? SEC. RUMSFELD: The technical phrase as to how that will be done, I think, is open. But from what I have seen thus far, my impression is that the president is leaning towards having the Iraqis play a significant role. Q: That doesn't preclude a U.S. military trial for Saddam. SEC. RUMSFELD: It certainly would move it off into the probability range -- into the lower end of the probability range, I would think. I think that the president's pretty well clear that he wants to have the Iraqi people engaged in this. And there is a law that's been put out by the Governing Council or -- I don't know; I guess it's not a law, it's something other than a law -- but a pronouncement that sets up an arrangement. And it does offer the possibility for international involvement, as I recall. I haven't read it for some -- STAFF: That's right. That's correct. SEC. RUMSFELD: That is correct. Thank you. (Cross talk.) Q: Mr. Secretary, I'd just like to ask you about an Army -- a report published by the Army War College last month and just to stipulate at the outset that the report reflects only the views of its author, not the Army War College itself. SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah. Q: But nevertheless, it's gained some currency because of the reputation of the author, Jeffrey Record. And he says, just very briefly, that the global war -- that it was a strategic error to link the war against al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein's Iraq; that the war against Iraq was not integral to the war on terror, but rather a detour from it; and that the overall war against terror is strategically unfocused, promises more than it can deliver and threatens to dissipate scarce U.S. military resources over too many ends. Could I just get your general reaction to that criticism, which reflects the -- SEC. RUMSFELD: Take a wild, flying guess! (Laughter.) I mean, really, Jamie! You're quite right. A person wrote an article, like an op-ed piece, and it's out there. And everyone's free to say whatever they think. That is the position of some people in the United States and in the world -- what he repeated -- and that's fine. It obviously is inaccurate. (Scattered laughter.) (Chuckles.) (...) * * * December 30, 2003 DoD Press Briefing - ANNOUNCEMENTS OF KEY PERSONNEL FOR MILITARY COMMISSIONS; ISSUANCE OF MILITARY COMMISSION INSTRUCTION NO. 9 ON MILITARY COMMISSIONS REVIEW PANEL Presenter: "Senior Defense Officials" SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm pleased to be here today to announce the selection of key personnel associated with military commissions, as well as the issuance of Military Commission Instruction No. 9 on the review panel for military commissions. The key personnel I'll be announcing today are a new appointing authority, the legal advisor to the appointing authority, and the review panel members. We've made great progress over the last several months in establishing a process that provides full and fair trials while protecting national security. On July 3rd, 2003, the president determined that six enemy combatants currently detained by the United States are subject to his military order of November 13th, 2001. More recently, as I believe most of you know, two detainees have recently received defense counsel. Although no military commissions have yet been scheduled, we are working diligently to set up a full and fair military commission process. This is the first time since World War II that the U.S. has used military commissions. While it's important for us to move quickly, we've been taking the time necessary to do things correctly. Today's announcement of a new appointing authority, legal advisor to the appointing authority, review panel members, and a new military commission instruction on the review panel process is another important step. First of all, I'm pleased to announce that the secretary of Defense has decided to select John D. Altenburg Jr. to serve as the appointing authority. John Altenburg retired from the United States Army as a major general in 2002. His last military assignment was as the assistant judge advocate general for the Department of the Army. He brings with him a wealth of legal and military experience that will greatly serve his nation in this role. The position of appointing authority was previously held by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. The deputy secretary has been working closely with our office to set in place the staffing and regulations that have enabled us to progress to this point. Secondly, I would like to announce that Air Force Brigadier General Thomas L. Hemingway has been named legal advisor to the appointing authority. The legal advisor supervises the appointing authority legal staff and advises the appointing authority on the approval of charges and referral of cases to trial, questions that arise during trial, and other legal matters concerning military commissions. General Hemingway retired in 1996 and was recalled to active duty in August of 2003 to serve in this role. And we thought it appropriate to announce his selection at this time along with the announcement of other key personnel. General Hemingway has served as a staff judge advocate at the wing, numbered Air Force, major command and unified command level. From those roles, he brings great experience in advising senior military leaders on military justice issues. He also served as a senior judge on the Air Force Court of Military Review and as director of the U.S. Air Force Judiciary. Next I would like to announce the members selected to be designated for service on the military review panel -- Military Commission Review Panel. First, Judge Griffin Bell, who is a former judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and former U.S. attorney general under President Carter. Second, Judge Edward Biester, who is a judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. And he is a former Pennsylvania attorney general and a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Third, the Honorable William T. Coleman Jr., who is a former secretary of Transportation. And Chief Justice Frank Williams, who is chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. The distinguished careers, wealth of experience and diversity of backgrounds of these review panel members speak for themselves. The press office can provide you with their bios. We are also releasing today Military Commission Instruction No. 9, which lays out the procedures the review panel will follow in hearing appeals from military commission decisions. Under this instruction, review panel members are responsible for reviewing the military commission proceedings. The review panel may consider written and oral arguments by the defense, the prosecution and the government of the nation of which the accused is a citizen. If the review panel finds that a material error of law has occurred, the review panel will return the case for further proceedings, which may include dismissal of charges. The review panel may also make recommendations to the secretary of Defense with respect to the disposition of the case before it, including with respect to sentencing matters. Except as necessary to safeguard protected information, written opinions of the review panel will be published. The review panel members will be commissioned as major generals in the United States Army during their intermittent service in this role. Thank you for your attention. We'd be happy to take your questions. Yes? Q: Lots of questions. Could you just sort of go through the steps, just to remind us where all these different people fit in and what each group is going to do? And can you also tell us how the decision last week in the Gherebi case, in the 9th circuit, is affecting the work that you all are doing? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Certainly. With respect to how the various people I've been discussing fit into the military commission process, the appointing authority is the person who supervises the military commission process. He appoints the military commission members that -- hence the name "appointing authority" -- and he makes sure that the prosecution and defense have the resources necessary to carry out their duties. He approves charges against individual detainees. He approves plea agreements. And he makes sure the process runs properly. (To colleague.) Would you like to add anything to that description of the appointing authority's role? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: No, I think that's pretty complete. SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: The review panel serves as the court of appeals for the military commission process. And so once a military commission, which is like a trial court, hears a case and decides the case, the cases will then be appealed to the review panel, which will issue an opinion on the case before it. Q: In that regard, is it -- SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Let me finish the second part of the question, and then I can get into other questions. With respect to the 9th Circuit decision in the Gherebi case, that's a question that's best presented to the Department of Justice. And we're working closely with them in responding to that. But that will not have an immediate impact on the military commission process. Sir, your question on the -- Q: The appeal -- is it an automatic appeal to the review panel, or does it have to be something originated by the defense counsel? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: It's an automatic appeal. Q: And it's binding? The review -- the appeal's findings are binding? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: The decisions of the review panel -- is that your question? Q: Yes. SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: The opinions of the review panel, when the review panel sends a case back down for further proceedings or for dismissal of charges, those are binding. However, if the review panel says, "Yes, we believe the trial was conducted appropriately," and forwards a recommendation to the secretary of Defense, that is just a recommendation. It's not necessarily binding on the secretary. Q: And then the secretary does what? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Then the secretary or the president will make a final decision on the case. However, no finding of guilty -- no finding of "not guilty" may be changed to a finding of guilt. Q: Sir, are there additional organizational or procedural steps of this type that you announced today that need to be taken before the first commission is actually activated, the first person is tried? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: (To other briefer) Would you like to address that question? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Sure. There will be an additional instruction that I think will have a modification to one of the existing instructions. But we hope to have those completed very soon. Q: But what does the additional instruction refer to? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, it's still a work in progress, so I'd rather not comment on it. Q: Just the general subject, you can't tell us? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: I'd rather not comment on it. Q: Why was it necessary to replace Mr. Wolfowitz with Mr. Altenburg? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, there was never any intention that the deputy secretary of Defense would serve in the appointing authority role on a permanent basis. The deputy served in that role at the point in time when he was helping us to get a number of the building blocks together for military commissions, including the things that we're announcing today -- the review panel, the review panel membership, and the initial determinations by the president that were made back in July. Now the military commission process needs to be managed on a day- to-day basis by someone like John Altenburg, who can devote his full attention to the matter. Q: As you gentlemen know, several human rights groups and legal activist groups have questioned the legitimacy of the commissions based on their reading of the rules announced to date. What's your response to their questioning of the legitimacy of this process? And do any of the steps announced today, do you think they may allay some of the concerns? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: (To other briefer) Would you address that first? And then I have a few more things to say. SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Sure. In the first place, I think that the process that has been set up is a process that provides for a full and a fair hearing. And I think a fair reading of our rules also shows that we are in compliance with international norms. I appreciate their point of view, but I'm satisfied that we are, and that the process that we have is going to be completely fair. And I think that what we are doing here today is another step in demonstrating that it's going to be a complete, fair, open process. SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Some of the criticism relates to the review process or the appeals process. And by announcing the review panel members, with their great experience and varying backgrounds at the trial level, the appellate level, and also announcing the review panel instruction which lays out the binding nature, in part, as we already discussed, of the review panel decisions, I think that should go a long way to allaying the criticism that's been made so far. SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yeah. In looking at the criticisms and the comments that were provided at the initiation of this process, they were looking for people who could review it who had distinguished legal careers. And I think that this responds to that suggestion. They were looking for a manifestation of independence. I think the fixed term limits provide exactly that. They're not beholden to the president to provide a particular decision in order to retain their job; they have a fixed term. And I think all of these respond to the suggestions that we got at the commencement of all of this. Q: Can I just follow up? How long is the term? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Two years. Q: Can I just follow up? Is there any thought of providing some kind of a mechanism to allow for the civilian federal courts to review this process at some point along the way? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Not to my knowledge. Q: Do you see any value in having that happen? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: I think that what we have right now is a complete, fair, stand-alone procedure. Q: Who chose the review panel members? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: The secretary of Defense. Q: It sounds like with this step that you're very close to being ready to begin. Could you look forward a bit and tell us what sort of schedule you expect down the road, when we might see the first trials beginning and how many you're anticipating having over the next couple of years? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, this announcement, you're correct, is a necessary step to beginning military commissions, but it doesn't foreshadow any particular timing on the start of military commissions. Q: What additional steps would need to be taken before you'd be comfortable initiating a commission? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: I believe (the other briefer) already discussed the next steps that will need to be taken. Q: Are those the only steps, by the way, or just examples of steps? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, I mean, obviously, there are numerous logistical steps that we'd have to -- you know, that would have to take place. Q: Like? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, just, you know, having lawyers go to Guantanamo Bay, for instance, and arranging for meetings, and then arranging for discovery -- all the sort of things that normally happen before a trial begins. Q: So looking for the lead here, is this the last major step before military commissions get underway? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, I wouldn't say it's the last major step because I would consider charging somebody to be a major step, and we are not doing that today. So -- Q: Is that the next step, though, charging people? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: There would, obviously, be other things. Well, as you know, we've already provided counsel in two cases. And the next -- from -- I suspect from your point of view, from the media point of view, the next major step would indeed be charging. Q: Is that done by the appointing authority? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: That is done by the appointing authority who prefers the charges and -- well, the prosecutor, of course, brings the charges to the appointing authority. The appointing authority has to make a decision of whether or not those are charges that warrant being referred to trial. And then, after that, the appointing authority would select the commission members and refer the case to trial. And once that happens, I think what you will see is the normal motion practice and discovery practice that precedes any legal process. Q: Is it a matter of days, weeks or months before charges may be brought? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: I'm not going to speculate on that date. Q: The review judges, I take it they're all civilians that will be named officers for the two-year term period; is that right? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: That's correct. Q: And they were civilians -- that's on purpose to add to the respectability of the court, that it's not controlled from the top down by military folks who might have an interest in a certain outcome of the cases? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Yeah, I believe the backgrounds of the four review panel members that we announced today, including the fact that they are civilians, does add to the independence of the review panel process. And I do want to point out that there may be additional -- a few more review panel members announced in the future. SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: But it's not correct to say that it was done on purpose to do what you said; it was done because they are highly qualified individuals who will serve well as review panel members, and it doesn't preclude different profiles if we do add additional members to the review panel. Q: Are they still active judges or are these all retired? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Chief Justice Williams is currently the chief justice of Rhode Island, so he is an active judge. Judge Biester is also currently serving in the Pennsylvania court system. Q: Are these paid positions? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: They will receive military pay for the time in which they are serving in this capacity. It's kind of -- you can analogize it to a Reservist's call to active duty for certain periods of time. Q: Do these people -- SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Sir, we've got some other folks who haven't gotten a chance. You, sir. Q: What is the voting process in the review court? Unanimous? Majority? How is that going to work? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: It's -- Q: I mean, in a regular appeals court, it's majority rules. SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: That's -- and that's correct. And that's the way it works in the review panel. Q: In commissioning them as major generals, is there a precedent for that? Was this what was done in World War II with the commissions? And what's the reasoning, the thinking behind making them military officers? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: The -- I'm not aware that there's a precedent for using this authority. The reason, though, that we have made them military officers is that the military commission process is designed to be within the military. This is the first time we've ever had a court of appeals, if you will, for the military commission. When military commissions were last held, after World War II, there was no review panel or court of appeals, what have you. This is the first time we've ever done that, and so we wanted to preserve the military nature of the decision-making process. Q: There is a military court of appeals right downtown. That has civilian judges. Why are you not using that court? And why create a new system when there is an existing military appeals process? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, the Military Court of Appeals has jurisdiction over the Uniform Code of Military Justice offenses, and their jurisdiction is set by statute. Q: And this is outside the UCMJ is what you're saying; it's an entirely sort of free-standing new military justice -- SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: It is separate, although it is authorized within what is called the UCMJ. Yes? Q: Could you just -- big picture -- remind us again why it is the Defense Department sees the need to create this special court for these cases, instead of going through the existing structures? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Before you start the answer, let's start where it started. The president -- Q: Right. Okay -- SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: -- determined, through the military commission -- the military order, that this was the way -- Q: Right. SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: -- he wanted another choice. Q: Just remind me the why -- because I think it gets very mixed up, with all the voices -- SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: It's important -- it's not the Defense Department that decided this. The president decided this. And in the context of the president's decision, we've gone through developing process to execute that decision. Q: Somebody did brief him on this before he made this decision? (Laughter.) SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: This was made by the president. Q: Yes, but somebody briefed him on here's how such thing would work. Q: No, he made it up. SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: It would be best not to speculate how the president decided -- Q: (Laugher.) SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: It’s my view that there is no existing international tribunal that has jurisdiction over these cases. And so it was necessary to create one. SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: I would add that, you know, some of the other reasons for having the military commission process include the tradition of using military commissions in similar circumstances in World War II, the need to protect classified information and the people involved in the proceedings from harm by terrorist attacks. And also the, you know, desire to show that the United States can handle the terrorist attacks in a fair way, in a way that comports with international standards of justice. Q: What are the other points of departure from the World War II military commission process here? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, you know, if you look at our rules and procedures, they are designed, you know, to provide the full and fair trial of the individual. There's the presumption of innocence. There's no adverse inference from remaining silent, which I think you would find was different in some of the World War II commissions. They have the right to call witnesses. They have the right to cross- examine. So there are a number of procedures here that I think comport with what we consider to be appropriate judicial processes today. Q: They were not present in the World War II system? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Some of these were not present in the World War II proceedings. Now, bear in mind that there were a number of different commissions during World War II and not all of them had precisely the same rules. And in addition, as has already been mentioned, we've set up a very detailed review process that was non- existent before, and we've selected very, very distinguished jurists to fill that capacity. STAFF: We have time for one more -- (off mike). Q: If I could get you to clarify. The review panel, was that a part of the original orders and you've just come out in detail today, or is this an entirely new thing that you've come up with? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: The review panel process was described in the secretary of Defense's military commission order that he issued in March of 2002. So this has been part of the plan all along and these are just additional details to flesh out the structure. Q: So you haven't actually changed anything from the initial plan, it's just simply for the specifics? There's nothing different in what you're announcing today that wasn't always planned for? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: I think that's correct. Q: Do you have something that has all of the names and backgrounds? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: We've got some fact sheets. Q: Can I ask you one quick clarification? Did you say there's going to be possibly more added to the review panel? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: There may be one or two more. Q: Okay, but there's no set number? Q: You've got four now, right? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: That's right. Q: So a majority would be a problem? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: What's that? Q: So you'd have to have more -- SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Well, let me clarify -- let me clarify one thing, actually, that's a good point. The review panel -- there's review panels that each sit with three members that decide a particular case. However, there are review panel members that can, you know, number up to -- there's no set limit, but I don't think it will be more than about a half dozen. And they will be designated by themselves to sit on a particular case. So you narrow it down to three in each case. Q: Sir, I apologize for coming in late. Maybe you already answered this. But because you're naming these people by name and they are prominent, well-known Americans, are you going to be providing them with physical security during their term of office and after that, against a potential terrorist threat because you have now named them by name? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: I don't want to address that right now. Q: You say right now; will you be addressing it in the future? SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: We just don't have anything to say on it right now. Q: Thank you. * * * December 30, 2003 DoD Press Release No. 990-03 MILITARY COMMISSION REVIEW PANEL MEMBERS TO BE DESIGNATED AND INSTRUCTION ISSUED http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2003/nr20031230-0822.html Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has decided to designate four individuals to serve as review panel members for military commissions. Additionally, the General Counsel of the Department of Defense William J. Haynes II issued Military Commission Instruction (MCI) No. 9, Review of Military Commission Proceedings. The members to be designated are: · Griffin B. Bell, former U.S. attorney general and former U.S. circuit judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · Edward G. Biester, judge, Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County, Pa., Seventh Judicial District; former Pennsylvania attorney general; and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives · William T. Coleman, Jr., former secretary of transportation · Frank Williams, chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. The four will be commissioned as Army major generals for an approximate two-year term while serving intermittently in this role. Review panel members are responsible for reviewing military commission proceedings. The review panel may consider written and oral arguments by the defense, the prosecution, and the government of the nation of which the accused is a citizen. If the review panel finds that a material error of law occurred, the review panel will return the case for further proceedings, including dismissal of charges. The review panel may also make recommendations to the secretary of defense with respect to the disposition of the case before it, including sentencing matters. Except as necessary to safeguard protected information, written opinions of the review panel will be published. Additional review panel members may be designated in the future. Review panel members will select from among themselves the three members who will serve on a specific case. The three members of each review panel may select, at their discretion, one member to act as the president of that review panel. MCI No. 9 prescribes procedures and establishes responsibilities for the review of military commission proceedings to provide for an independent review similar to the role of an appellate court in the civilian court system. Among other things, MCI No. 9 requires review panel members to perform their duties impartially, creates a single term of service for review panel members and protects review panel members against undue influence. MCI No. 9 and biographical information on the review panel designates can be found at: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/commissions.html * * * December 30, 2003 DoD Press Release No. 989-03 APPOINTING AUTHORITY DECISION MADE http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2003/nr20031230-0820.html Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has decided to delegate the position of appointing authority for military commissions to John D. Altenburg, Jr. The appointing authority is responsible for overseeing many aspects of the military commission process, including approving charges against individuals the president has determined are subject to the Military Order of Nov. 13, 2001. Among other things, the appointing authority is also responsible for appointing military commission members, approving plea agreements and supervising the Office of the Appointing Authority. Altenburg will serve in this capacity as a civilian. Altenburg retired from the Army as a major general in 2002. His last military assignment was assistant judge advocate general for the Department of the Army. His biography is available at: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Dec2003/d20031230altenburg.pdf * * * December 30, 2003 DoD Press Release No. 988-03 MILITARY COMMISSION LEGAL ADVISOR ANNOUNCED http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2003/nr20031230-0821.html The Department of Defense announced today that Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway has been named the legal advisor to the appointing authority in the Office of Military Commissions. Hemingway is responsible for providing legal advice to the appointing authority on approval of charges and referring cases to trial, questions that arise during trial and other legal matters relating to military commissions. His duties also include supervising the appointing authority legal staff. Hemingway retired from active duty after 31 years of service in 1996 and has been recalled to active duty to fill his current position. The general has served as a staff judge advocate at the group, wing, numbered air force, major command and unified command level. He also served as a senior judge on the Air Force Court of Military Review and as director of the U.S. Air Force Judiciary. His biography is available at: http://www.af.mil/bios/bio_7760.shtml * * * November 25, 2003 DoD Press Release No. 892-03 U.S. AND AUSTRALIA ANNOUNCE AGREEMENTS ON GUANTANAMO DETAINEES http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2003/nr20031125-0702.html WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The United States and Australian governments announced today that they agree the military commission process provides for a full and fair trial for any charged Australian detainees held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. Following discussions between the two governments concerning the military commission process, and specifics of the Australian detainees’ cases, the U.S. government provided significant assurances, clarifications and modifications that benefited the military commission process. After examining the specific facts and circumstances surrounding each Australian detainee case, the Department of Defense was able to provide the following assurances, which are case specific: The prosecution has reviewed the evidence against the Australian detainees, and based on that evidence, the prosecution would not seek the death penalty; The security and intelligence circumstances of Mr Hick’s case are such that it would not warrant monitoring of conversations between him and his counsel; If David Hicks is charged, the prosecution does not intend to rely on evidence in its case-in-chief requiring closed proceedings from which the accused could be excluded; and The U.S. and Australian government will continue to work towards putting arrangements in place to transfer Hicks, if convicted, to Australia to serve any penal sentence in accordance with Australian and U.S. law. Subject to any necessary security restrictions, military commissions will be open, the media present and appropriately cleared representatives of the accused’s government may observe the proceedings; If an accused is convicted, the accused’s government may make submissions to the Review Panel; If eligible for trial, and subject to security requirements and restrictions, an accused may be permitted to talk to appropriately cleared family members via telephone, and two appropriately cleared family members would be able to attend their trial; and, An accused may choose to have an appropriately cleared foreign attorney as a consultant to the Defense Team. Foreign attorney consultant access to attorney- client information, case material or the accused will be subject to appropriate security clearances and restrictions and determined on a case-by-case basis. The assurances are in addition to other military commission procedures which already provide for the presumption of innocence, proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, representation by a competent and zealous defense counsel free of charge, no adverse inference for choosing to remain silent and the overall requirement that any commission proceedings be full and fair. The Department of Defense is in the process of drafting clarifications and additional military commission rules that will incorporate the assurances where appropriate. * * * November 24, 2003 DoD Press Release No. 882-03 TRANSFER OF GUANTANAMO DETAINEES COMPLETE http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2003/nr20031124-0685.html The Department of Defense announced today that it transferred 20 detainees for release from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to their home countries on Nov. 21. Additionally, approximately 20 detainees arrived at Guantanamo from the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility on Nov. 23, so that the number of detainees at GTMO is approximately 660. Senior leadership of the Department of Defense, in consultation with other senior U.S. government officials, determined that these detainees either no longer posed a threat to U.S. security or no longer required detention by the United States. Transfer or release of detainees can be based on many factors, including law enforcement and intelligence, as well as whether the individual would pose a threat to the United States. At the time of their detention, these enemy combatants posed a threat to U.S. security. In general terms, the reasons detainees may be released are based on the nature of the continuing threat they may pose to U.S. security. During the course of the War on Terrorism, we expect that there will be other transfers or releases of detainees. Because of operational security considerations, no further details will be available. - END - * * * November 2, 2003 - 9:00 a.m. EST SECRETARY RUMSFELD INTERVIEW ON FOX NEWS SUNDAY (...) Snow: Now we're back with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Also here, Brit Hume, Washington managing editor of Fox News. Brit? Hume: Mr. Secretary, General Wesley Clark suggested this week with regard to that memo that you wrote asking all the questions, that you had to leak it yourself, and that you did leak it. What do you say? Rumsfeld: That's just nonsense. I didn't leak that memo. That's insulting. Hume: He said that he heard about it through the gossip and on the Sunday talk shows. Shouldn't we believe that? Rumsfeld: Listen, if people start getting their information from that, we're all in trouble. Hume: Let me take you back, if I can, to today, and -- Rumsfeld: That memo was a serious memo, and I wrote it because I think those are good questions, they're important questions, they're fair questions, and they are the kinds of things that need to be discussed and explored. But I sent it just to four people. I certainly didn't expect that it would end up out in the press. Hume: Well, from the memo, you said earlier on this program that the war on terror, overall, is going well. Rumsfeld: It is. Hume: You also suggested in that memo that our metrics for measuring how well the war on terror is going are lacking. What about that? Rumsfeld: And probably will always be lacking. In other words, it's probably not knowable how many people are being recruited. Somewhere in a jail in America, in a madrasa school that's taught by a radical cleric somewhere in one of 20 other countries of the world. We can't know how many there are, but what I do know, I think, is that we need to engage in that battle of ideas. We need to be out there encouraging people not to do that. Rather, they should be learning things like language or math or things that they can provide a living from. Hume: Let me follow up -- Tony asked you about that earlier -- to what extent might our presence in Iraq -- military presence in Iraq -- be helping in the recruitment of new terrorists? In other words, might we unwittingly be helping with the growth of the terrorist movement, if it can crudely be called that, while we're trying to defeat terrorism in that country? Rumsfeld: I suppose -- that's like saying that by fighting crime, you encourage crime. Hume: Well, in a particular sense -- Rumsfeld: And it's not clear to me that that is a good linkage there. To the extent that there are 90 countries engaged in the global war on terror, and to the extent they are successfully arresting people; capturing people; killing people; interrogating people; putting pressure on their finances; making it harder for them to recruit; making it harder for them to move money; harder for them to travel -- I don't think that encourages terrorism. I think there are things that do encourage terrorism. Hume: Such as? Rumsfeld: Such as people who are bringing in young people and training them to go out and commit suicide bombing attacks and telling them they'll go to heaven if they kill enough people. I think that's the kind of thing that's doing it. Hume: You mentioned earlier, Mr. Secretary, that we'd captured 42 of the 55 most wanted, and we're capturing them by the dozens every day. What are we doing with these people that we capture, and what are you getting from the very high-level people we've captured, and where are they? Rumsfeld: Well, we have a lot of the people from Afghanistan that were captured from a lot of different countries are in Guantanamo Bay. All the people that have been captured in Iraq are in Iraq. They are there being interrogated. Hume: What's their life like? I mean, what kind of place are they in? Rumsfeld: Well, my goodness, they are being treated better than they ever would have been treated under a Saddam Hussein regime. They have food, they have beds -- Hume: Well, some of them were in the Saddam Hussein regime. Rumsfeld: Of course, they were. That's why they're in the prisons in Iraq today. But they are being interrogated -- we could not have captured or killed 42 of the top 55 Iraqi Saddam Hussein loyalists without getting a lot of good information from people who were Saddam Hussein loyalists. Hume: How about the top people? Are you getting a lot from them? Rumsfeld: I don't want to get into who we're getting it from, but obviously it is an important aspect of our work there to interrogate people that are captured. Snow: Mr. Secretary, are the tribunals going to be begin this week? Rumsfeld: I don't know. Snow: You don't know? Rumsfeld: That's right. Snow: Are they likely to start this week? Rumsfeld: I don't know. Snow: Are they going to start soon? Rumsfeld: Well, they are certainly -- the work has been prepared so that in the event that it's time to start them, we'll be prepared to do that. Snow: How do you judge when the time is right for a military tribunal? Rumsfeld: Well, I don't. I've delegated, for the most part, those responsibilities, and for anyone to be assigned to a tribunal under the current military order, the president has to do that. So it's a matter for lawyers and the Department of Justice and the White House and, ultimately, the folks in the Pentagon. But, to my knowledge, no one has been specifically designated to start next, in answer to your question. Snow: All right. You mentioned before the conditions -- Brit and you were discussing conditions. There is a controversy involving Lt. Col. Alan West [sp]. Apparently, while interrogating a member of the Iraqi resistance, he fired a gun -- not at the guy directly, but it scared him sufficiently that, in fact, he ended up giving information that could have saved American lives. Now it turns out that he is facing court martial for so doing. Why? Rumsfeld: It's a matter that the Army is looking into. It is not a matter that the Office of the Secretary of Defense has been engaged in. I am always under strict rules to not discuss particular cases because of the subject -- they call it "command influence" -- the risk that, by responding to questions like yours and being in the chain of command ultimately, someone -- somehow that issue could come on my desk for some sort of a judgment -- Hume: Well, actually, it could, couldn't it? I mean, if you chose to overrule or short circuit this process, you could do it, couldn't you? Rumsfeld: They tell me that's the case. Hume: Well, when you see this guy about to be disciplined for being stern and tough and scary in interrogating some Iraq suspect, how does that strike you personally -- just as a general matter? Rumsfeld: I can't discuss this as a general matter, and I can't discuss what I think personally, or I'd be happy to -- because to do so would be to mishandle my responsibilities as Secretary of Defense. The Army has rules and requirements and regulations. The Army is addressing this. It will move along in its normal order and, at some point, it conceivably could come to me, in which case, I shouldn't say how I feel personally. Hume: This case aside, then, what about a rule? Rumsfeld: I cannot talk generically on this subject. Snow: Well, then, I would give you a different generic question that may fit into the same topic area, which is this -- you talked before about what does not encourage people to commit acts of terror. Let's talk about what discourages them. Does not an effective show of force and an effective show of determination discourage terrorists? Rumsfeld: I'm not talking about prisoners now, but if you're talking about -- Snow: People who could become prisoners. Rumsfeld: People who might become terrorists or might become active terrorists -- certainly, the fact that the United States has put together a large coalition and demonstrated that we're going to do everything we can to go after them and to capture them and kill them has to be a deterrent, to some extent. The only choice we have is to hunker down in the United States and hope they don't hit us again. Well, they did hit us. They hit us on September 11th, and that's proof that hunkering down does not work. The only way to deal with terrorists is to go after them. Snow: You know, you mentioned in the memo that you worried that maybe we're not showing sufficient imagination. Should we take that to mean that you don't think we may be hitting people hard enough in enough places right now to send the message and to discourage them not only in terms of police action and military action but psychologically? Rumsfeld: I was answering question, not answering -- asking not answering. I was asking them because I think they are useful to get up on the table and talk about. And I don't have answers for all of those. Pardon me? Snow: But questions do not arise out of the blue. There have to be a set of considerations or [inaudible] -- Rumsfeld: You are quite right, and the essence of what I was probing at there was this concern I mentioned earlier -- what else might we be able to do to dissuade young people -- and these aren't young poor people -- a lot of these terrorists are very well educated. How can we persuade them from thinking that that's a good thing to do? And how can we reduce the number of recruits they have? Snow: How much of this -- can you name any large Muslim organization that actually is being helpful to us in fighting terror? Rumsfeld: There are any number of organizations. I don't know quite what you mean by "organizations," but we're getting cooperation from countries that are Muslim countries. We're getting cooperation from individuals within those countries and organizations within those countries. The vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists nor do they believe in terrorism. Snow: Your memo mentions madrasas, and it is a concern of many Americans that children who come into Muslim academies come out hating the West. Rumsfeld: Well, people who go into American jails end up becoming terrorists, too. I mean, it isn't unique to madrasas. There are a lot of wonderful madrasas schools around. Snow: What is the role of Saudi Arabia in this? Rumsfeld: The Saudi government, particularly since they were attacked some weeks and months ago, has been very aggressive -- more aggressive than ever in the past in arresting, in capturing, in prosecuting, and in cooperating with intelligence matters, and it's been a big help. Hume: Let me ask a question about your expectations of the media. You have expressed wonder, bordering, at times, on astonishment and many times irritation at what you have perceived to be the imbalance in the coverage from Iraq -- that the good stuff has not been covered; the bad stuff has been covered fairly well. You have been around a long time, Mr. Secretary, serving in Republican administrations going back to the Nixon years. Did you expect anything other than a hostile press? Rumsfeld: No, I didn't, but it -- Hume: Why the sense of wonder? Rumsfeld: Oh, I think that it's useful to let the world know that what they're seeing and hearing is not the whole story, and it hasn't been. I think it's helpful for the American people to have a chance to hear the other side of the story and know that good things are happening as well. Anytime someone tries to do that, someone says, "Oh, they're trying to put a shiny face, a smiley face, on what's going on. Look, we're in a way, and it's tough, and it's dangerous, and no one is trying to put a smiley face on anything. But, by golly, when you've got that many Iraqis -- 100,000 -- now providing for their own security; where you have a governing council and a bunch of ministers; and you have a Central Bank; and you have a new currency; and you have all the universities and colleges open; and the hospitals are open; and there was not a humanitarian crisis -- sitting around wringing your hands and saying, "It's horrible, it's horrible, everything is terrible" is nonsense. It isn't all terrible. There's some darn good stuff happening. Hume: Do you think you came a little late to the charge of telling that story? That you waited too long to start to tell that story? Rumsfeld: No, I think I came a little too late to pin the tail on the donkey, that's all. Snow: Well, as a member of the donkey establishment, one last question. Do you worry sometimes, because of your position that you get too rosy a report from some of the people who work for you in Iraq? Rumsfeld: No, no, no, we -- I see the good, the bad, and the ugly, and it's all there. Snow: All right. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, thanks for joining us. * * * October 30, 2003 -- 1:36 p.m. EST SECRETARY RUMSFELD BRIEFS ON IRAQ (...) Q: Mr. Secretary, in the last two weeks, in some interviews and in some public statements, there's been an interesting, growing -- comments by some people -- in the administration on that side of the river that warlordism is a traditional factor in Afghanistan, and that whatever you call it, warlorders will always be there. And they have opined that the United States should, perhaps, factor that into the way they approach Afghanistan and not deal with the problems of warlordism. Do you concur with that emerging thought? RUMSFELD: Where on the other side of the river are you hearing this? I haven't heard that. Q: Well, I'm reluctant to, obviously, disclose the names of these people, but -- RUMSFELD: No one's looking for names. Which -- which -- Q: The National Security Council. RUMSFELD: The NSC is saying that warlordism should be factored in? I just don't -- I haven't seen the reports and I don't know quite what that means. Q: No, I'm asking your personal opinion on these comments made in public, on occasion. Do you think that warlordism is something that should be factored into Afghanistan? RUMSFELD: Well, I don't know quite what it means in this case. If you're talking about militias existing in the country, clearly, militias have existed in parts of that country, not least of which are the Kurdish Peshmerga forces. And other elements have had militias -- Q: Sir -- RUMSFELD: Just a minute. Q: Afghanistan, sir, not Iraq. RUMSFELD: Oh, I'm sorry. Go to Afghanistan. I'm sorry. I was thinking of Iraq. No wonder I couldn't understand it. (Light laughter.) Q: I thought you might -- RUMSFELD: I'm sorry. Yeah, I had the wrong country. Thank you for -- Q: They're close! RUMSFELD: Yes, they are. (Chuckles.) I think that it is appropriate to take into account the history of any country, when you're dealing with that country. It is also true that there -- Afghanistan has had a history where they have had regional militias of various types and persuasions, some of which worked together, some of which worked against each other. That's still the case today, that there are elements that exist in the country. The Loya Jirga, as I recall, produced a document which argued that they wanted a central government and they wanted a national government, and they wanted a national army. And that over some period of time, the capabilities of those regional militias or armies, in some cases, would presumably be incorporated in various ways into other security forces that are national. Some of that's taken place on a modest scale thus far. I know Mr. Karzai is interested in having that continue. How the Afghans will ultimately decide it is an open question. I think the United States has been -- dealt with the Afghan situation and President Karzai in a perfectly appropriate and rational way. They've tried to be supportive of him. And the Bonn process, which is now moving along, and a constitution which addresses that to some extent, will help decide how that country ultimately goes. In the last analysis, it's not going to be this side of the river or the other side of the river that's going to decide what happens in Afghanistan, it's going to be the Afghan people as they worry through their constitutional situation. (...) * * * October 26, 2003 [ Published as an op/ed by the Washington Post ] TAKE THE FIGHT TO THE TERRORISTS By Donald H. Rumsfeld Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the suicide bomb attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut -- a blast that killed more than 240 Americans. Soon after that attack, President Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz asked me to take a leave of absence to serve as presidential envoy for the Middle East. That experience taught us lessons about the nature of terrorism that are relevant today as we prosecute the global war on terror. President Bush has made clear that the only way to win today's war is to carry the fight to the enemy and roll back the terrorist threat to civilization, "not on the fringes of its influence, but at the heart of its power." He has it right. To understand why, one might consider what happened in Beirut two decades ago. The attack occurred when a truck loaded with explosives drove into the U.S. Marine barracks near the Beirut airport. The logical response was to put cement barricades around buildings to prevent another truck bombing. But the terrorists soon figured out how to get around those defenses: They began lobbing rocket- propelled grenades over targets that had such barricades. So the tendency was to hunker down even more. We started seeing buildings along the Corniche, the popular seaside boardwalk that runs for several miles along the sea in Beirut, covered with a metal mesh, so that when rocket-propelled grenades hit the mesh, they would bounce off, doing little damage. So what did the terrorists do next? They adapted. They watched the comings and goings of embassy personnel and began hitting soft targets -- people on their way to and from work. For every defense, the terrorists moved to another avenue of attack. Within six months of the first attack, most of the American troops had pulled out of Lebanon. And from that experience, terrorists learned important lessons: that terrorism is relatively low-cost and deniable and can yield substantial results at low risk and often without penalty. Terrorism can be a great equalizer -- a force multiplier. And terrorism works in the sense that it can terrorize, and even a single attack can influence public opinion and morale and alter the behavior of nations. Terrorists have a sizable advantage. A terrorist can attack at any time, in any place, using virtually any technique. And it is not possible to defend every potential target at all times in every place against every form of attack. That being the case, the way to defeat terrorists is to take the war to them -- to go after them where they live and plan and hide, and to make clear to states that sponsor and harbor them that such actions will have consequences. That is what President Bush is doing in the global war on terrorism. When our nation was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, the president immediately recognized that what had happened was an act of war and must be treated as such; that weakness can invite aggression; and that simply standing in a defensive posture and absorbing blows is not an effective way to counter it. He declared that henceforth "any person involved in committing or planning terrorist attacks against the American people becomes an enemy of this country . . . . Any person, organization, or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes. [And] any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world -- and will be confronted." In the ensuing two years, thousands of terrorists have been rounded up, and two terrorist regimes have learned the president meant what he said. The approach the president has taken is even more important as we enter a new and dangerous security environment. When the Marine barracks was attacked two decades ago, the terrorist threat was largely conventional. Terrorists had weapons that could kill dozens or, in the case of the Beirut bombing, hundreds of people. On Sept. 11 the terrorists grew even bolder -- bringing the war to our shores and using techniques that allowed them to kill not hundreds but thousands. Yet consider: the explosive agent used on Sept. 11 was jet fuel. The danger we face in the 21st century is the threat posed by terrorists armed not with jet fuel but with more powerful weapons. If the world does not deal with the emerging nexus between terrorist networks, terrorist states and weapons of mass murder, terrorists could one day kill not more than 240 people, as in Beirut, or more than 3,000 people, as on Sept. 11, but tens of thousands -- or more. That is why our country and our 90-nation coalition is at war today. That is why we have forces risking their lives at this moment, fighting terrorist adversaries in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere across the world. It is also why it is critical that our country recognize that the war on terrorism will be long, difficult and dangerous -- and that as we deal with immediate terrorist threats, we also need to find ways to stop the next generation of terrorists from forming. For every terrorist whom coalition forces capture, kill, dissuade or deter, others are being trained. To win the war on terror, we must also win the war of ideas -- the battle for the minds of those who are being recruited by terrorist networks across the globe. That is why the president is using all elements of national power: military, financial, diplomatic, law enforcement, intelligence and public diplomacy. Because to live as free people in the 21st century, we cannot live behind concrete barriers and wire mesh. We cannot live in fear and remain free people. The task is to stop terrorists before they can terrorize. And even better, we must lean forward and stop them from becoming terrorists in the first place. That is a lesson we learned two decades ago in Beirut. [ The writer is secretary of defense. ] © 2003 The Washington Post Company * * * October 23, 2003 DoD NEWS BRIEFING-SECRETARY RUMSFELD, MR DI RITA AND LT. GEN. SCHWARTZ (Participating was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Lawrence Di Rita, Acting Assistant Secretary Of Defense for Public Affairs; Lieutenant General Norton Schwartz, Director For Operations, J-3, Joint Staff.) (...) DI RITA: Charlie? Q: Larry, has there been a decision yet on the who and how in handling the General Boykin matter? Who will handle it and how will it be handled? What IG will be involved? The Pentagon IG? DI RITA: It is going to be the Department of Defense IG. After some limited discussion on the best way to approach it, that was the general sense of it. I think in these kinds of matters, the Department of Defense inspector general works very closely with the relevant service. And I would imagine in this case, although I don't have a detailed feel for it, I would imagine in this case he'll be working with the Army IG. Q: What is the nature of this? What will he be trying to determine, whether or not there was a violation of military law or -- DI RITA: He's going to do what General Boykin asked, which is General Boykin would like to clarify that he didn't -- that notwithstanding the specific comments he made -- and we've all said enough about that -- but is there any rule or regulation that needs clarification, is there anything that General Boykin did that may have been inconsistent with that? Those are questions that are relevant. General Pace -- or General Myers, I should say, spoke to that to some extent when this first came out, that this is a gray area, so it's worth getting clarification about the gray area. And General Boykin feels that that would be useful, and we agree. Q: In other words, is he going to check whether these comments might not have just been injudicious, but might have actually violated federal law or -- DI RITA: No, no, no, no. It's what is the -- what are the rules appropriate to this kind of activity, the rules in this -- the chairman spoke -- and I would simply refer you to what the chairman said. The chairman did speak to this on the first day about, you know, it's not a --when you're doing these kinds of speeches, and military officers doing these kinds of things, it gets down to a question very often of just the judgment of the individual officer, and not so much is it allowed. And the chairman, I think, referred to a prayer breakfast. I don't know if that's an appropriate comparison, but -- it may or may not be; I'm not trying to evaluate that. But that's the kind -- the rulings on these things are gray areas, and it's worth reviewing them when situations like this occur. Q: So, again -- I'm sorry to press it -- you don't look for any kind of perhaps punishment or anything to come out of this, but simply to determine -- DI RITA: The inspector general will review it and make his findings and then, probably, some recommendations. But I'd -- I'm getting very close to the edge of my competence on this thing, so I think I'll stop. Bob? Q: Larry, in the Rumsfeld memo, the "hard slog" memo, he talked about progress against Taliban, al Qaeda. And then he referred to the Ansar al-Islam as the effort just beginning against them. I'm wondering why it's just beginning and what you're doing, what is the nature of the effort against them? DI RITA: I assume you're referring to the global war on terror memo. Q: Oh -- DI RITA: I wasn't sure if I understood it, based on your description of it. (Laughter.) I don't think this is the place to -- that was a memo of correspondence between the secretary and his senior subordinates, and so there's only so much we're going to be able to talk about details of the memo because it wasn't anybody's intention that you and I would be discussing it today. What we've done with Ansar al-Islam to some extent we've been able to discuss and in some areas we've been unable to discuss. We know that they were ensconced in Iraq for a period of time. We know that they were -- we've had various engagements against them. We know that we've seen various activities by them since the war. But it's not really the place to be able to discuss in great detail what more might be done. Q: (Off mike) -- just beginning, I'm just wondering if that's -- why now, why -- DI RITA: I've just described what's going on with Ansar al- Islam, and I'll just leave it at that. I don't think I have any more to clarify that. Q: Larry, Senator Kennedy -- I mean, I'm sorry -- Senator John Kerry today, talking about the memo, said he thinks it confirms what they've been saying all along, that the administration doesn't have a plan, they're not doing this right, and if the secretary is admitting privately what many have been saying publicly, it raises very serious questions about his leadership and the president's leadership. Is there a reaction to that kind of statement? DI RITA: I didn't see the statement. I'm prepared to accept most of what you just said as to what Senator Kerry actually said, but I don't -- the secretary's not trying to reveal some hidden truth. As I said yesterday, and as I think the secretary has said, these are questions he's raised, others have raised, consistently over a fairly significant period of time. He's asked questions, for example, how do we measure risk across the board. And this is something that's reflected in this memo, how do we measure risk, and in this case the risk of capturing and killing terrorists versus not knowing how many may be being created at the same time. So it's a measurement issue. He's asked how can we best organize the force, which is what's reflected in this memo. He has asked what key capabilities does the U.S. currently lack. And he's asked how can we measure readiness. And those are what's reflected in that memo. What I've just read from you is something he testified to in June of 2001. Many of the same questions that he's talked about for two-plus years. So there's no -- it's to one extent gratifying that people are focused now in a way that they have not been focused before, on the very questions of transforming this department, transforming, more broadly, the United States government for a challenge and a set of tasks that's very different from those that were extant at the time that we first organized ourselves. Q: In that memo, though, he also makes statements like: the DOD is not capable of changing fast enough to succeed in the war on terror. Are those statements in that memo truly what Secretary Rumsfeld believes? DI RITA: Well, it's -- again, he's making assertions and raising questions in a way to generate discussion, admittedly in the sort of absence of the context that he knows that his -- that the combatant commanders and the chairman and others have, they have a context because this is the conversation that they've been having with him for a couple of years, and in which we're making a lot of progress. And when you step away from that context, these look like revealed truths. But the fact is, he's been asking these questions for a while. There's nothing about that memo that's overly -- I would say, that diverges significantly from the kinds of things that he's got -- he's going about to do. He was asked to take this job with the eye toward transforming the department. He has engaged the senior leadership of the department to do that. In some areas there are things that the department is doing very well and reacting very well to the global war on terror. In their -- in other areas he's asking the question, are these things we should continue trying to do, are there other ways that it could be done better, either within this organization or elsewhere? And I really must emphasize that he -- these aren't the kinds of things that he tends to know the answer to. He's asking questions. Q: Lastly from me, is there an investigation into how a memo sent to four people ends up being leaked? DI RITA: There's no investigation. It's a -- it's a vexing question, though, isn't it? I'll stipulate, I accept the question. But there's no investigation. Q: But are questions being asked about how it was possibly being leaked? DI RITA: No. You could spend all day doing that. It's just there isn't. Q: Larry, could I also say that -- DI RITA: I'll come back to you. Q: -- you -- you say that he asked the questions in this memo. But, in fact, he does make conclusions in this memo. He said there's no real metric way to measure success about how many terrorists are being caught, he said very different things about al Qaeda than he said in public. And you released this memo yesterday. So it's out in the public domain. This isn't something between -- DI RITA: Correct. Q: -- obviously it was, because it was leaked before that. DI RITA: Right. Q: But you released it. Why did you release it, and what about these -- DI RITA: I'll tell you why I released it. We released it because the memo itself is -- the memo is better read than having somebody characterize it. And the way it was characterized was -- was -- many felt significantly diverged from the actual intent and the tenor of the memo. So, we released it. And the fact was that -- Q: (Off mike) DI RITA: -- prior to having it released, people in this room standing up in front of cameras with copies of the memo made it pretty apparent that it was -- it's a little bit -- you know, trying to put the horses back in the barn. So there was no real reason not to release it at that point. Jonathan? Q: I want to go back to the Ansar question. In March the Ansar was the subject of an intense offensive led by U.S. Special Forces, handled mainly by about 7,000 peshmerga. They killed a bunch of them, but a lot of them escaped into Iran. Now, the secretary's memo indicates that they have reconstituted. And there are reports that they maintain a series of safe houses in Baghdad that are being used as bases to attack U.S. troops. So I'm wondering if you can be a little bit more forthcoming about what happened. How did this organization, which was subjected to a ground -- three- or four-day ground assault, air attacks, cruise missile attacks, many members of which escaped into Iran, is somehow reconstituted and is considered a threat to American forces. DI RITA: Do you want to take that? GEN. SCHWARTZ: Sure. Terrorist cells are, by their very nature, resilient. And yes, we succeeded in the Qurnah area in attacking a location where they were concentrated. And yes, we've been paying attention to their presence in Baghdad and elsewhere. The key thing is that, as was recently reported, that we apprehended one of their principals. And this effort will continue, both to act against those that lead the organization and those soldiers who act against our troops. We will conduct offensive operations and we'll make sure that we minimize their capability. Q: The Iranians, who took many of these people prisoner as they crossed the border, and I was there; I saw what was happening -- did they actually release them with the intent or with the knowledge that these people were going to be returning back to Iraq and could be -- and would be a threat to American forces? GEN. SCHWARTZ: I don't think I can speak definitively to that. DI RITA: But generally speaking, we have said, the secretary and others have said that some of the countries surrounding Iraq have been unhelpful in trying to influence events inside of Iraq. We know that terrorists from other countries, including countries bordering Iraq, are entering Iraq, foreign terrorists, and Ansar al-Islam is one of those groups. So, we're not in a position to characterize Iran's intentions. But there's no question that the countries surrounding Iraq have, in some cases, been certainly abetting the passage of terrorists into Iraq, and Ansar may be one of them. Q: (Off mike) -- they're not foreigners; I mean, they are Iraqi -- GEN. SCHWARTZ: And with your permission, I think it's important to acknowledge that there is a major effort going on to secure the borders. And that operation is called Chamberlain, and it is an effort both on the east and the west and the south not only to field Iraqi forces, the border police, if you will, but likewise, to use our coalition capabilities, surveillance and troops, as well, to better protect and seal the borders. That is a major undertaking that General Abizaid has underway, and it is part of that process. Q: Are you getting helpful information from the man who was captured? Could you tell us? GEN. SCHWARTZ: I prefer not to characterize the results of that debriefing. Q: General? DI RITA: Tony. We'll come back to you, John. Go ahead. Q: Can you say whether you've found that Ansar al-Islam had a role in any of the major suicide bombings of recent weeks; and also, whether they're operating independently or whether they are operating with, you know, Ba'athist -- former Ba'athist loyalists of the regime? GEN. SCHWARTZ: There are some signs of -- I wouldn't call it coordination, but some indications that there are linkages between the former regime loyalists and some of the AI seniors. But generally speaking, they are independent actors. Now, with regard to the other question, I think that AI, once again, is our principal organized terrorist adversary in Iraq right now and we are concentrating our resources on that. Q: And do you have any sense, I mean any knowledge at this point, any evidence at this point as to who has been carrying out those major bombings, the suicide attacks, attacks against U.N. headquarters, against the hotel and so on? GEN. SCHWARTZ: We do not have a case, a convincing body of information that would lead to a particular group. The basic sense of it is, though, that this continues to be former regime loyalists or recruited foreign fighters. DI RITA: Tony? Q: In the Sunni triangle apparently the level of violence continues to increase in sophistication and scope. Can I get your sense of why that is at this point? And capabilities, a la the secretary's allusion in his memo. Are the capabilities over there -- are we lacking some capabilities over there that the Joint Staff would like to accelerate fielding? More armor, radio jammers, things, capabilities that would help mitigate some of these attacks? GEN. SCHWARTZ: We have -- the deputy secretary has undertaken an effort to scrutinize all the needs that might be required, and has, in fact, realigned several hundred million dollars to make that happen. This involves such things as up-armored Humvees, it involves such things as body armor, it involves things of a nature that would conduct surveillance on the borders and so on. So the short answer to your question is, those things that need to be done have been addressed and are aggressively being monitored by the departmental leadership. Q: What difference would some of those technologies realistically make, given the level of attacks over there, the sophistication -- (inaudible)? GEN. SCHWARTZ: There's no silver bullet. And there's not a single thing. For example, there is not a single box that will stop improvised explosive kinds of activity. In some cases these are radio-controlled; in some cases not; in some cases they're on one frequency and another. So this is not a simple problem. What I would say is that what we are going to do is deploy the best material and our best capability that is available for our troops. But we should not unduly raise expectations that we have a silver bullet here. Q: Okay. And why the -- why the ratcheting up of attacks in the Sunni triangle, from your perspective? GEN. SCHWARTZ: I think there is a -- they are -- have decided to engage us, and they are doing so. But I think it is important to recognize that some of that is a result of our own activity. The 82nd Airborne has been focused on the Fallujah and al-Ramadi area. That is where a lot of these attacks have occurred. So the bottom line is, this -- there's a combination of things: some elevation, as General Sanchez has indicated, in the attacks by the enemy, but likewise -- and he also indicated that we have increased our tempo as well to take these guys out. Q: General Schwartz? DI RITA: How about back here? We'll come back to you -- Q: In the wake of the Boykin incident, has the secretary or other high level DOD officials either issued new guidelines or re-stated existing guidelines for officers who want to speak publicly before groups? DI RITA: Not that I know of. The secretary certainly hasn't. The secretary has reiterated again what the president has said, which is this isn't -- you know, General Boykin's comments don't reflect the policies that the president has spoken to with respect to the war on terrorism. But he -- we've not -- I'm not aware of any revised policies. And I think that might be the kind of thing that would wait before we'd do anything for the results of the review anyway, also. Q: Doesn't an officer need to get clearance from someone to appear before -- in uniform? DI RITA: These are the kind of questions that people -- that General Boykin himself wants reviewed, and so we're reviewing them. I don't have an answer for you today, though. Q: General Schwartz, could I just follow up on a couple things you were saying, just to be very clear? Could you explain to us what exactly is the -- in your words, so we're not just interpreting, what is exactly the increased pace or spike of activity you see in the Sunni triangle? How is that increasing? And just a little perspective about the opposition forces: do you have a current sense of -- I guess the -- DI RITA: And I think we're getting (close ?) here. (Cross talk.) DI RITA: (Off mike) -- from the Midwest. I thought you could answer it, Barbara. I know it's better -- go ahead. GEN. SCHWARTZ: Sir, the -- or, I'm sorry. (Laughter.) Q: Yes, thank you! GEN. SCHWARTZ: Ma'am, the -- Q: And do you still feel that the potentially unguarded munition sites are problematic? GEN. SCHWARTZ: The answer to your first question is that we are experiencing in the neighborhood of 25 attacks a day throughout all of Iraq. And I think it's important to recognize that that doesn't mean that the amount of attacks are uniform across the country. The north and the south remain stable and calm. It is concentrated, as we've indicated, in the central, in the Baghdad area. That is up somewhere between five and six or seven attacks a day on average from several months ago. So that gives you a sense of the change in the numbers. And with regard to the ammunition sites, it's important to understand that we've come across 6,000 ammo caches of various descriptions in the last few months, and we have cleared somewhere around 5,600 of them. So there is a major effort underway. There's over 6,000 personnel committed to that level of effort. We are currently protecting just under 100 of the remaining sites 24/7. There are others which are protected less than that, but that is based on a determination that the content of those sites is less transportable, less accessible and, therefore, less worrisome to coalition forces. DI RITA: Yeah, let me just give you one piece of context for that, too, on the question of ammo dumps. There was a report recently -- and the numbers aren't quite right here -- but in Bosnia, where we've been for seven-plus years, in the last period of time, and I don't know if it was a few months or recently, our forces there uncovered some few dozen tons of ammo of some sort. RUMSFELD: Forty tons. DI RITA: Thank you, sir. I'm going to get away, because pretty soon we get somebody who knows what he's talking about! (Laughter.) But 40 tons of ammo in the last -- whatever -- month, two months, at a place we've been occupying for eight years. Q: You have excellent assistance from your staff! (Laughter.) DI RITA: Yes, I do. He's the best action officer in the place. And I'm going to actually get out of the way and let him -- (off mike). RUMSFELD: I should underline what the general said, that the 6,000-plus ammunition dumps or caches or deposits or areas are only the ones we've identified. We're confident there are more because it is a discovery process. This country is a country that has just enormous amounts of weapons. And today is the 20th anniversary, unhappy anniversary, of the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. That attack killed 240-plus Americans. Shortly after the attack, I received a phone call from Secretary of State George Shultz, saying that President Reagan and he wanted to meet with me, and asked me to serve for a period as the personal envoy of the president to the Middle East. I remember that experience very well, and if you'll think back to it, it was a -- just an enormously violent event. And the photographs of it were photographs of a great many wonderful Americans in a building that had been nearly totally destroyed. After that, the immediate reaction was a human reaction, and cement barricades were put up around buildings housing American troops, so that trucks couldn't willingly or easily get into and attack a major building; barricades somewhat like the ones you see around here. And of course, the next thing that happened was the terrorists starting using rocket-propelled grenades and lobbing them over those barricades. The barricades are fine for trucks; they're not so fine for airborne missiles of various types. The next thing, if you went down to the Corniche in Beirut and looked up, you'd see embassy buildings draped with mesh, a wire mesh, the idea being that when the rocket-propelled grenades would hit the mesh, they'd bounce off. And so, the point being that terrorists go to school on you, and they adjust their tactics. The mesh worked for a short period, and pretty soon, they started hitting soft targets, people going to and from where they were working. I mention this because it is a point that I've tried to make from time to time; namely, that a terrorist can, in fact, attack at any time, in any place, using any technique, and free people are not able to defend at every place, at every moment of the day or night, against every conceivable type of technique. The advantage is with the attacker. And the only way to defeat terrorists is to take the war to them; to go after them where they are, where they live, where they plan, where they hide; go after their finances; go after the people who harbor and assist them; and reduce the number of them, and the number of people supporting them and the number of people financing them, so that the numbers of new terrorists coming into the process, trained and financed and ready to go out and kill innocent men, women and children across the world, so that that number is reduced. That's the president's policy. It's the correct policy. How many people looked up "slog" in the dictionary? (Light laughter.) Just be honest -- Q: Quagmire, isn't it -- RUMSFELD: Huh? Q: Quagmire. (Laughter.) RUMSFELD: How many of you did? How many -- some of you did. I'll bet you a few of you looked it up, you just don't want to admit it; you're embarrassed. How many of you have heard that word recently? Q: Slog? Q: Recently? Q: It was in the memo! (Laughs.) RUMSFELD: No, except for me! (Laughter.) I mean, I went home and my wife said, "Are you sure that's a word?" Q: It's a British word, isn't it? RUMSFELD: And I said, "Oh, I'm sure it's a word, but I just haven't heard it for about 20 or 30 years and" -- Q: Thought you'd resurrect it? RUMSFELD: -- I thought I'd bring it back into active competition. The Oxford Dictionary, I'm told by Mark, has a definition of "slog," the preferred one, I believe, which is: "slog -- to hit or strike hard, to drive with blows, to assail violently." And that's precisely what the U.S. has been doing, and intends to continue to do. Q: Is that what you thought it meant when you wrote it? RUMSFELD: It's close enough for government work! (Laughter.) It's not only the Oxford Dictionary's preferred definition, it's mine. We're finding these terrorists where they are, and we're rooting them out, and we're capturing them, we're killing them. It's difficult work. It won't be over any time soon. And I will close by saying it will be a long hard slog, indeed. Q: Mr. Secretary, Larry said that you were not trying to reveal any, quote, "hidden truth," were the terms he used, about the war on terrorism or the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. What do you think -- what does that mean? And are you disturbed that this memo was leaked? RUMSFELD: No. I think I understand what happened. I sent it to four people. One of the people was out of town, and his office received it, thought, "Those are interesting questions. I'll staff it out." Circulated it to a number of people, so that by the time the boss got back he'd have their thoughts. And one of the people that it was circulated to, obviously, thought I'd issued it as a press release -- (laughter) -- which, I might add, was not the case. Q: But even though you've asked for investigations of numerous leaks in the department, you're not going to ask for an investigation to this? Can you -- RUMSFELD: First of all, I don't think I have asked for investigations in numerous leaks. Q: One time -- RUMSFELD: I can recall one time -- in my life I can recall one time. Q: Well, okay. Okay. Bill Arkin -- the Bill Arkin. But a lot of money and a lot of people were asked about that. There was this long investigation. So I just wonder if -- RUMSFELD: Just once, I believe. Not many. Just want to make sure everyone gets on the right wavelength here. No, I certainly don't. I understand how it happened, and those things happen. Life goes on. Q: Was it a classified document, sir? RUMSFELD: No. It wasn't. It was just a personal memo from me. It did -- nothing in it was classified -- or should be classified. Q: Mr. Secretary, regarding -- regarding your -- you're asking for thoughts regarding the possibility of a new institution to be created with the specific purpose of fighting terrorism better. You must have your own thoughts along those lines, and I'm wondering if you might be able to share them with us -- RUMSFELD: I don't, really. I really am at that stage where I -- I met with those combatant commanders, I listened to what they had to say. Each one is a serious, talented, well-organized, well- staffed, disciplined person. They reported what they're doing in the global war on terror, which they do every two or three weeks, to us. And as I listened to it, I started asking questions. I started taking everything they'd said, adding it up, and saying to myself, Gee, are we -- have we got our eyes up off the ground and across the horizon far enough? Are we looking out far enough in a way that would enable us to think of ways and approaches that might make us be able to do still better than we're currently doing? And that's -- that's what it had to do with. And it was -- I went back to the office, and I thought to myself that it would be useful to get that down, those things that just came to my head. And I started writing them down and sent the memo out to just four people with the thought that it would be helpful. I re-read the memo in the paper and thought, not bad. (Laughter.) Q: Mr. Secretary, what about the critics who are out there saying that the administration is putting a happy face on the war on terrorism publicly, but privately this memo indicates that things are not so happy, that, in fact, you -- RUMSFELD: Those that are attentive here in this room know that that's not what we've done here. What we have done is we've put out a very straightforward, accurate, to the best of our ability, and balanced view of what we see happening and what we believe to be the case. And there's been no mystery about the fact that this is -- from the very beginning we've said that this global war on terror is a tough one, it's going to take a long time, it's going to take the cooperation of a lot of countries, it's going to take all elements of national power. These were things that have been said and repeated consistently for 2- 1/2 years. Q: Do you believe that the DOD is not capable of changing fast enough to be successful in the war on terrorism? RUMSFELD: Big institutions don't change fast. That we know. First of all, it isn't the task of the Department of Defense to be successful in the global war on terror, it's the task of our country, all of our governmental agencies, public and private, as well as 90-plus other countries. So no one department of government can do it all. And the questions that I raised is, are we organized? First of all, I look my own department and say, are we doing everything that we can do within our capabilities and our statutory authority? And then I look beyond it and say, are there things that we're not arranged to do that we can, within our own resources, adjust ourselves as to how we're organized, trained and equipped, to do a better job for a new set of problems? And I continuously ask questions like that. I've been doing it my entire life, and I probably will continue doing it. Then the question beyond DOD is, is the U.S. government properly organized? And I think of things, for example, like the fact that USIA doesn't exist anymore. And is it appropriate -- might there be a need for some new element that -- a 21st century version of that that could help the United States as a country communicate with the world on some of these important issues? So it was more of a searching look that was involved in this memorandum. Q: Mr. Secretary -- Q: Mr. Secretary, a point of information. RUMSFELD: Mm-hm. Q: Disinclined -- RUMSFELD: You came late, and now you interrupt everyone else who's had their hands up. Q: You raised the -- RUMSFELD: I just can't imagine you doing that, Jamie -- Q: You raised the point of -- (inaudible) -- RUMSFELD: -- to your friends, your associates here. It shocks me. Q: You know that's sort of a pet thing of mine. RUMSFELD: What is? Q: Definitions of words. RUMSFELD: Oh-oh. I didn't get into that (when you were here ?). Q: Disinclined though I am to be disputatious -- RUMSFELD: (Laughs.) Q: The American Heritage Dictionary -- RUMSFELD: There are a lot of different definitions; I know that. Q: Well, this is ITS preferred definition: to walk or progress with a slow, heavy pace; plod, as in "slog across the swamp." RUMSFELD: Right, I've seen that one. (Laughter.) I read the one I liked. (Laughter.) And if you'd been here, you would have found out about that. I'm going to take two questions. I've got to go back to work. Q: Wait, sir. Q: I -- RUMSFELD: Shhh. Mr. Secretary -- RUMSFELD: Shh. I'm going to take two questions. And then I do have to go back to work. You're number one. Q: If you're characterizing this memo as simply thinking out loud with your top aides, given the political climate in Washington, how problematic is it to have this thinking-out-loud memo out there for Congress -- members of Congress, especially, to chew over; for presidential candidates to chew over right now? RUMSFELD: It's life; it's the way it works in this town. If you don't -- I don't think anyone who's ever come into a position like secretary of Defense is asked to cage their brain and stop thinking. And my -- that is what we're here for, is to try to think of the best interests of the American people and to ask the kinds of questions that are important and are probing, and it seems to me that that's a very constructive, useful thing to do. I've been doing it all my life. I intend to keep on doing it. And I think that if they're fair questions, it's a good thing for people to chew them over. And I must say, I was having breakfast yesterday morning with a group of congressmen, and Democrats and Republican alike; they ended up coming down here and talking about it. And I think that the memo served as a very useful vehicle for discussing with them important aspects of the global war on terror which they, as members of the Congress, consider as important, and I think they should consider them as important. Last question. Q: Sir? You walked in here and talked about the 20th anniversary of that horrible day in Beirut, and you know that there was an investigation afterwards that concluded the Reagan -- the policy that put those men there was flawed from the get-go: untenable goals; they were put in a bad situation. To what extent does that lesson -- has that lesson driven your view on how U.S. forces should be mobilized for conflict? And have you rethought our policy in Iraq against that backdrop and those criticisms of 20 years ago and that bombing? RUMSFELD: Oh, there's no question but that the people in this department, civilian and military alike, go back to that; they go back to the Cole and they go back to all of the events that have occurred where terrorists have been successful. And every one that one looks at and thinks about reinforces the importance of what I said in my opening remarks; namely, that anyone who thinks that free people can just hunker down and find a way to hide and defend against what's happening in this world of ours are wrong, and that the only way to deal with the problem of terrorists is to take the battle to them. And that's what the president of the United States is doing. Q: A clarity of mission, though, and whether the military is being put -- given a mission that they're really -- they're not equipped to deal with; that was one of the criticisms there. The Marines were in an untenable situation with a religious civil war. RUMSFELD: Oh, I think the report on that was more complex than what you've just said. And my answer is yes, everyone here, civilian and military, do look at those. And I wasn't kidding. I wasn't kidding. Two questions. (Cross talk.) I said two questions. (Cross talk.) Q: Mr. Secretary? Q: Can we ask General Schwartz more questions? One more? * * * October 22, 2003 NEWS BRIEFING - LAWRENCE DI RITA (Addressing Secretary Rumsfeld’s 16 October Memo) Memo can be found at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2003/d20031016sdmemo.pdf And I can answer a few questions on the memo, if that would be helpful. Q: Yeah. Q: Sure. Q: Thank you. Q: Can you give us the memo? DI RITA: Can I give you the memo? I don't know. But let me just, if I can, to get back to the original question, this was not -- whatever this memo was -- and I think Mr. Saxton and Mr. Turner both characterized it pretty well -- it was not a memo about Iraq and it was not a memo about Afghanistan. It was a memo about the global war on terror, trying to ask the kinds of questions that need to be asked, that any leader should be asking, and that other leaders in this government have been asking in Congress and the administration, about the big questions in the war on terror. Are we -- is the government, and in particular, the memo was focused on the Department of Defense -- is the department that was essentially created in the middle -- at the end of World War II to face a very different set of challenges the same way we would design the department today if we knew that we could start over with the challenges that we face going forward? This is a question that Secretary Rumsfeld has been asking in a variety of ways since he took office. Again, the transformation -- the need to transform, the need to rethink all of the long-standing ways we approach problems is just not breaking news when it comes to Secretary Rumsfeld's sense of urgency that he's placed behind those. Q: (Off mike) -- as some bleak picture of Iraq -- ? DI RITA: Look, I don't want to -- Q: -- as long-term -- DI RITA: There's nothing in the memo -- you know, when the secretary describes that things are going on, or when other describe in Baghdad that -- or in Iraq generally, you know, there are some good things going on and some bad things going on, and people say, "All you want is the good news out there." No. We're looking for sort of a more sort of sophisticated and nuanced perception of reality than what you get by just constant sort of focus on one aspect of what's going on. And I guess I'd characterize the characterization of the memo the same way. The secretary's not saying anything like what the memo's been characterized. What he's doing is elevating the perspective of the leadership of this department and asking: I don't know the answers to these questions, but they're on my mind, and I want them on your mind, too, because getting toward the answers to those questions are (sic) going to help us as we think through the very kind of basic issues. How do we know, for example, that -- how can we measure -- how do we know that we're capturing or killing more terrorists than are being created every year, than are being trained to hate freedom, to hate sort of -- certainly, America, but countries that share our values. How do we know that we're stopping more of those types of people, that sort of cancer, than is being created? That's a fair question. And until we know that, we won't know where we are in the global war on terror. Q: We ask those questions all the time, and the sense we get from the Pentagon is why don't you ask more happy questions? Like, why are you always asking these critical questions? DI RITA: If you're asking these questions all the time, then you share the same set of question sets that the secretary has been raising, and others in the government. This is not just about Secretary Rumsfeld's memo, but this is a memo in which he crystallized his thinking on some of these issues. And again, it's easy to talk about it in the context of Afghanistan or Iraq, but that's manifestly not what this memo's about. What this memo is about is going forward well beyond the horizon that any one of us is going to be serving, are we prepared or postured in a way that will win what we've all said is going to be a long-term fight? So -- Q: Can we have a copy, I mean, if it's not secret? DI RITA: It's a thought. It's a thought. Q: I mean, since it's not a secret. Q: If we can't, is there anything in the USA Today's printing of it that is incorrect or that eliminated parts -- DI RITA: I'm told that the USA Today article links to a website that may have the memo on it. Q: It does. But is that incorrect? I mean, is there -- DI RITA: I've scanned it. It looks pretty close. I mean, I haven't done a word- for-word comparison so I think -- Q: (Off mike) -- if there's an omission in there that we should know about? DI RITA: Yeah, there was the one line that said, "This is not meant to be grim," but I guess that didn't make it in the -- (laughter) -- Q: They dropped that, huh? DI RITA: I've got time for maybe one more. I've got to go too. Q: Given that you're characterizing this memo as sort of, you know, just another chapter in the secretary's trying to transform the military and inform the senior leadership, why did it come out now? Why -- was there an event, something that -- because these are the kinds of things that we've already heard from the Defense Department and transformation -- DI RITA: Well, but I think it sort of -- when you're trying to get a message to stick, you say it a lot. And the secretary and other leaders in this department -- the chairman, the deputy secretary, General Pace, and others -- are very mindful of the need to repeat the basic principles a lot because people need to always be reminded: what are we working on, what are the things we're doing. And let me just -- you know, we have -- well, you know, the memo sort of refers to it, so let me get into it just a little bit. But he has had -- he gets regular meetings and briefings about sort of the status of things -- what are we doing and where are we. And he had a similar meeting of that nature recently with senior military commanders, and they gave a very good accounting of the work that they're doing in their areas of operations. And it's a sort of linear projection of the things we're doing now and how we're going to keep doing them and do them better. And that's very important, and it's the way we're going to continue succeeding in Iraq and the way we're going to continue succeeding in Afghanistan, for example. But on the basis of that discussion, and similar discussions, it wasn't just that one, it occurred to the secretary that it might be useful to sort of pull up a little bit and remind people that, A, this is a global war on terror, it is not a war in Iraq, it is not a war in Afghanistan; it's a global war on terror that gets to fundamental questions of how the United States is organized, how the military is organized, how it's trained, how it's equipped to succeed. And so, it was -- I sort of -- I think in reflection of a discussion where it was more of a status discussion -- Here's where we are; and over the next six months we're going to be doing this. That's important, and he needed -- Q: But -- DI RITA: Let me finish, please. And that's important. But I think on the basis of that, he wanted to inject at this particular time a sense that while that's all very important, remember to look up and look beyond the tree tops because the things that we really need to think about that are going to extend well beyond our tenure is: Are we organized the right way? Do we have -- and again, he doesn't know the answers to these questions. That's not his -- his style is to ask questions of people that are likely to be more -- or I should say more likely to have the answers or be able to develop the answers. And he doesn't have the answers. So there isn't, I don't think, any one of the queries in that memo in which anybody should assume he knows the answer and he's waiting for somebody to kind of parrot it back, because that's not his -- that's not the way he operates. Q: But this is the kind of stuff you guys say every day to us and on TV. I mean, this should be -- DI RITA: I agree. I was a little surprised to see it got such coverage, because it is -- Q: Is it a sign, though, that somebody in the Pentagon or in the leadership, if this is an internal memo, just isn't getting it? DI RITA: I don't know. I've described it what it is. And that is, to some significant extent -- and believe me, I'm grateful to hear that you are hearing this all the time. I think that people who spend time with the secretary, including combatant commanders and others, are hearing it all the time. But again, it's perfectly natural and understandable for people to be working a set of problems and want to improve their capability to achieve -- to make success against that set of problems and still need to be reminded of the fact that when you work through these programs, don't forget it's bigger. And, you know, there's -- you know, there's a need to enlarge the scope about what we're doing and remind people that the scope is enlarged; this isn't just a war in Afghanistan or Iraq, it's a war on terror. It's a war where the enemy will adapt, is already adapting, and if we aren't flexible enough in our institutions to adapt, it's fair to wonder, you know, how long- term can we engage in this. And we're going to engage it long-term. The president has said that, the secretary and others. So it's a constant sense of urgency. It's what he does. He injects urgency. He asks questions and he gets people thinking about things, and that's what this memo, hopefully, will do. It appears to have had that effect. Q: Has someone actually tasked to develop a yardstick to determine if you're winning this war against global terrorism? DI RITA: This isn't a tasking memo. Certainly it's well understood, at least for those who understand the secretary, as it sounds like many of you do, that he's asked this question a lot, he's going to continue to ask it. And, you know, he's the kind of guy that likes to sort of plant a flag down the - down road and then kind of, without knowing how we're going to get there, get people working generally in that direction. And if it needs to be altered, then that group of sort of intellectual capital will help him alter it. And that's where it is. So this is not sort of an action item, "Get back to me by the 15th on these three things." These are clearly big questions that deserve big thinking. And the people that he addressed it to are the people that will be able to engage the rest of this institution into that kind of thinking. So that was the purpose of the memo. Q: Sir, does the department still have confidence that General Boykin can do his job without distracting from your goals on the war on terrorism? I mean, you're going into another news cycle, that -- you know, this story's not going away. I mean, is this something that -- DI RITA: Here's what's gone on. General Boykin said he apologizes for anybody having taken offense to his statements, and in fact, he's not sure that his statements were reported in the way that -- but putting that aside, he simply apologized for it. He further said that he doesn't intend to make these kinds of speeches anymore, in particular because of the position that he's in. And then, he asked for an inspector general to come and investigate him. Now, when you balance that against this officer's distinguished military career, it's -- some people might think that's a close balancing, but at the moment, there isn't anybody who thinks that he can't -- recognizing that he, again, has apologized; has acknowledged that he's not going to give any more of these speeches, precisely because of the position that he's in, among other reasons, and asked to be investigated. That is not a sort of minor set of actions that he took on his part to demonstrate his understanding that the president's policy, the secretary's policy, on how we view this war, how I think most of the American people view it, is what it is. The secretary's talked about it, the president's talked about it. His statement acknowledges that he understands that, Boykin. When you weigh all that, again, in the preponderance of a military career that is just very distinguished and very much committed to all the very principles that we think have been exposed by his comments -- may have been exposed by his comments in terms of the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion -- Q: I have a -- (inaudible) -- to that. Q: Wait a minute. DI RITA: Okay, okay, okay. Hold on. Let me just finish this statement. When you -- I'm not here to defend his statements, and I don't intend to, okay? He's spoken on his own for his statements. I've not seen the tapes. I've seen some of them, and I know there's a lot more out there. I'm not here to defend his statements. What I'm here to do is say he took these actions, including he asked to be investigated, which we're going to do, and that's going to take a certain amount of time, and when you weigh the preponderance of all those things, nobody's thinking about asking him to step aside. I don't have any further things. Thank you very much. * * * * * * * * *