Remarks by the President to the Travel Pool
NSA Operations Center
National Security Agency
Fort Meade, Maryland
10:45 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: How're you doing?
Q Not bad, sir. I wanted to ask you, yesterday you said, in
Little Rock, that a better job could have been -- a better job needs
to be done to prevent terrorism. Does that mean in hindsight --
which, obviously, is 20/20 -- a better job could have been done?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think there's no question that the FBI, for
example, did not have as its primary mission a prevention of an
attack. And now it does. In other words, the FBI was a fine law
enforcement agency, chasing down white collar criminals and people that
were committing crimes in America. And that's good and that's still an
important function of the FBI. But now the focus is on -- the
primary focus is on preventing a further attack. So the mission has
changed, and that's a positive change.
In terms of whether or not the FBI and the CIA were communicating
properly, I think it is clear that they weren't, and that they --
now we've addressed that issue. The CIA and the FBI are now in close
communications, there's better sharing of intelligence. And one of the
things that is essential to win this war is to have the best
intelligence possible; and when we get the best intelligence, to be
able to share it throughout our government.
And as you've seen the reforms that both Director Tenet and Bob
Mueller have put in place, a lot of those reforms had to do with how
able the two are able to talk to each other. And it's a very positive
reform.
Q Had the reform been put in place beforehand, if the FBI had
been --
THE PRESIDENT: I haven't seen any evidence --
Q -- could the attacks have been stopped?
THE PRESIDENT: I've seen no evidence today that said this country
could have prevented the attack.
Q Mr. President, President Mubarak told the New York Times this
morning that he is proposing the idea of declaring a Palestinian state
and then negotiating the hard things -- borders -- later. Does
that make any sense to you?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I look forward to talking to President
Mubarak. I'd rather -- you know, I think it's probably wise for me
to listen to what he has to say and not read it, you know, through the
filter of a fine newspaper. So I'm going to look forward to my
meetings with him at Camp David.
Q He also -- one of the things he said in that was that the
Egyptian intelligence services had told the United States that they
were expecting an al Qaeda attack a week before September 11th. Is
there any -- do you know of any reason to believe that?
THE PRESIDENT: No, listen, there's all kinds of speculation. As I
said, I have seen no evidence that would have led me to believe that we
could have prevented the attacks. And, obviously, if we could have, we
would have prevented the attacks.
Q Sir, is there any concern at all that all this finger-pointing
between the FBI and the CIA is distracting them a bit from the mission
at hand, preventing future terrorist attacks?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you know, one of the things I've said is
that, for example -- yes, I'm concerned about distractions from this
perspective: I want the Congress to investigate, but I want a
committee to investigate, not multiple committees to investigate.
Because I don't want to tie up our team when we're trying to fight this
war on terror. So I don't want our people to be distracted.
In terms of the gossip and the finger-pointing, level three
staffers trying to protect, you know -- trying to protect their hide,
I don't think that's of concern. That's just typical Washington, D.C.
But what I am concerned about is tying up valuable assets and time,
and possibly jeopardizing sources of intelligence. And that's why it
is very important that the Congress do investigate, but they do so in a
way that doesn't jeopardize our intelligence gathering capacity.
That's why they have intelligence committees on Capitol Hill, and
that's the appropriate forum, as far as I am concerned, for these
investigations.
Q Mr. President, you've got a lot going on foreign policy wise
right now, the Middle East meetings later this week, the continued
efforts here. Is this all moving Iraq to the back burner?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think you need to read my speech that I
gave at West Point. If you haven't, I'll get you --
Q I was there, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh. I think you need to have listened to my speech
I gave at West Point. (Laughter.)
The war on terror is -- and my strong desire to protect our
homeland is of paramount importance to me. And I think people
understand my position on these closed regimes that harbor and desire
to have weapons of mass destruction. And as I said in my speech, we
use all the tools at our disposal to deal with these nations that hate
America and hate our freedoms.
And one option, of course, is the military option. But as we've
said repeatedly, I have no plans on my desk at this point in time.
But, nevertheless, these nations that I have named need to take --
they need to take America seriously. When it comes to defending our
freedoms, they need to be worried about how we defend our freedom.
We're very serious about this, and we expect them to change their
behavior.
Q Mr. President, good morning, sir. Do you plan any new
initiatives on -- to combat global warming?
THE PRESIDENT: No, I've laid out that very comprehensive
initiative. I read the report put out by a -- put out by the
bureaucracy. I do not support the Kyoto treaty. The Kyoto treaty
would severely damage the United States economy, and I don't accept
that. I accept the alternative we put out, that we can grow our
economy and, at the same time, through technologies, improve our
environment.
Q Sir, are you concerned about the morale in the intelligence
agencies, given the criticism that's been lodged so far, and is that
part of what you're going to be talking about today with the employees
of the NSA?
THE PRESIDENT: I believe morale is high. I glean that from the
leaders with whom I meet on a regular basis. These -- our
intelligence communities understand they are on the forefront of one of
the most important wars in our nation's history. And they're -- I
think I'm more worried about them being overworked. These good people
are putting in long, long hours.
And one of my jobs is to remind those who sacrifice on behalf of
our nation that we appreciate it a lot. And I'd rather have them
sacrificing on behalf of our nation than, you know, endless hours of
testimony on congressional hill. The appropriate place to do that, of
course, is the intelligence committees. And, again, I repeat, the
reason why that's important is because we have got to guard the
methodology -- methodologies of our country, of how -- it's
important for us to not reveal how we collect information. That's what
the enemy wants, and we're fighting an enemy.