[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2002, Book I)]
[June 4, 2002]
[Pages 931-933]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Exchange With Reporters at Fort Meade, Maryland
June 4, 2002

Intelligence Prior to September 11, 2001

    The President. How are we 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. If the reform had been put in place beforehand, if the FBI had 
been----
    The President. Well, it's hard--it's hard--I haven't seen any 
evidence----
    Q. ----could the attacks have been stopped?
    The President. I've seen no evidence to date that said this country 
could have prevented the attack.

Upcoming Visit by President Hosni Mubarak of 
Egypt

    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.

Egyptian Intelligence Prior to September 11

    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 Qaida 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.

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And obviously, if we could have, we would have prevented the attacks.

Intelligence Community/Congressional Investigation

    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, DC.
    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.

Iraq

    Q. Mr. President, you've got a lot going on foreign policywise 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]
    No, 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'll 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.

Global Warming

    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.

Morale in the Intelligence Community

    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

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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.
    Thank you all.

Note: The exchange began at 10:45 a.m. in the Operations Center at the 
National Security Agency.