Interview on NBC's Meet the Press with Tim Russert

Interview on NBC's Meet the Press with Tim Russert


Secretary Colin L. Powell
Washington, DC
June 13, 2004

(10:30 a.m. EDT)

MR. RUSSERT: And with us is the Secretary of State Colin Powell. Mr. Secretary,
welcome back.

SECRETARY POWELL: Thank you, Tim. Good morning.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me start with Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaida website has posted this
picture. They say it is Paul Johnson. And there is his business card. Mr.
Johnson's son has confirmed that his dad has been kidnapped in Saudi Arabia.
The other night, Kenneth Scroggs, was killed. The British have authorized their
staff to leave. Your Department, the State Department, has suggested that
Americans not travel to Saudi Arabia. Is the Saudi Kingdom unraveling?

SECRETARY POWELL: It's not unraveling, but it's certainly a dangerous situation
right now. Terrorists are going after the Saudi leadership. They're trying to
make the country unstable. And I know that the Saudis are treating it with
utmost seriousness and they're counterattacking. They've done some rolling up
of these terrorist organizations. But, clearly, this is a dangerous time for
Saudi Arabia and we are working with them. We're cooperating with them in every
way that we can to defeat these terrorists.

MR. RUSSERT: If they can affect the world's oil market by driving American
workers out of Saudi Arabia, what will that do to our economy?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, it would not be a good thing for them to be able to do
this. And that's why we have to do everything we can to help the Saudis keep
that from happening. We have to put back a sense of security in the society so
that people will not leave. We don't like the situation we are in right now in
Saudi Arabia. And I know that the Saudis see this in the same serious manner
that we do, and they're going to go after these terrorists, but it's a tough
situation.

MR. RUSSERT: Now that Mr. Johnson has confirmed his dad was kidnapped, can you
confirm it?

SECRETARY POWELL: For Privacy Act reasons, I cannot yet confirm it, but I
accept what I see on television.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the situation in Iraq and discussions the President
and you have had with leaders of European nations. This is how Charles Kupchan,
who works for the Council on Foreign Relations, put it the other day:

"No WMD, no link to al-Qaida, no progress on the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process, the region has been essentially stirred up, not tamed, and al-Qaida
recruitment has picked up. So Europeans generally feel that their assessment of
the war going into the conflict was accurate."

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, there is also no Saddam Hussein. There is no
dictatorial regime. There is a new Iraqi Interim Government that is about to
take over. There is a new UN resolution that was approved unanimously that
approves the way going forward.

And so, while we do have challenges ahead, and the principal challenge is one
of security -- stopping these attacks, stopping this insurgency in Iraq -- and
once we can get that security situation under control, the combination of our
troops, coalition troops and Iraqi forces being built up, then you will see
reconstruction take off. You will see a better life for the Iraqi people being
created. You will see elections. You will see a new constitution, and you will
see something far better than a regime that is no longer there.

MR. RUSSERT: But the second ranking Iraqi official was killed yesterday. The
insurgency seems to be picking off the Iraqi leadership.

SECRETARY POWELL: They are going after these courageous leaders who have
stepped forward, but that's not something to give them credit for. They're
murderers and they are trying to murder people who are trying to serve the
Iraqi people, and they cannot be allowed to succeed.

What kind of world would we have, what kind of region would we have, if these
kinds of terrorists were allowed to proceed or allowed to succeed and we gave
up and said we are not going to do anything about it?

We are going to do something about it. We're going to continue to keep our
troops there, coalition troops there, do everything we can to build up Iraqi
forces. We're going to support the new Iraqi government that is rapidly taking
over. Fifteen ministries have already been transferred to full Iraqi control.
And the President, that you will be interviewing later, as well as the Prime
Minister, will be taking office with their leadership at the end of the month
and we will support them. They must be given everything they need to prevail
over these former regime elements and terrorists.

MR. RUSSERT: Must the Iraqis not take control of their own destiny? Must they
be willing to kill fellow Iraqis, if need be, to put down the insurgency?

SECRETARY POWELL: Yes. And I think they understand that perfectly. They know
that they are being challenged. They don't want to go back to the past. We
don't want to go back to the past, and we are not going to go back to the past.
And that's why we're so pleased that the United Nations Security Council spoke
clearly about this with a 15-zero resolution.

Even those nations that did not think it was wise for us to go into Iraq last
year -- France and Germany, I will mention -- have now come together on this
resolution, recognizing that the international community must not fail. We must
not allow terrorists to prevail. Whatever the disagreements were over the past
year, they have to be behind us, and we have to come together now to defeat
this insurgency and to move forward.

Now, the G-8 meeting, clearly, also reinforced this point. I'm sure that the
NATO Summit, later this month, will also do likewise. We're not expecting major
additional contributions of troops from our NATO Allies beyond the 16 nations
that are already involved. But there may be other things that NATO can do, with
respect to police training, with respect to headquarters involvement, and we'll
be pursuing this with our NATO colleagues.

MR. RUSSERT: There was an article in the Financial Times the other day which
suggested that failure, in fact, may be an option. And let me show it to you.

"Simon Serfaty, an analyst at the Center for Strategic International Studies,
was recently commissioned by someone on the Administration -- he did not say
who -- to write a paper on the effect of failure in Iraq on Europe and
transatlantic relations. He defines failure as an abrupt withdrawal of most
U.S. troops while Iraq dissolves into internecine strife."

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, that is not an option for us. The President's made it
clear that we're going to stay and help this new sovereign government. The
international community, with its unanimous vote in the Security Council, has
said the same thing. It is not an option to, essentially, walk away from this
problem and allow these terrorists to prevail or these former regime elements
to take the Iraqi people back into the past.

MR. RUSSERT: The cost of the war, this was on the Associated Press wire the
other day:

"Cheap Gas From the War? Only for Iraqis, Not Americans."

"While Americans are shelling out record prices for fuel, Iraqis pay only about
5 cents a gallon for gasoline -- a benefit of hundreds of millions of dollar
subsidies bankrolled by American taxpayers A three-month supply costs American
taxpayers more than $500 million, not including the cost of military escorts to
fend off attacks by Iraqi insurgents."

SECRETARY POWELL: This is the nature of the economy that we inherited from this
regime. A regime that was bankrupting itself, by providing these kinds of
subsidies for gas, for food, and for other necessities, which they controlled.
It was a way in which they control the population.

As the new government takes over, and as the economy settles down and becomes
more market-based, you will start to see all of these prices start to go up to
market level conditions, and certainly not at the current subsidized level.
Even the electricity was free. And we have to change all of that, as we bring
this country along and bring it into the 21st century and into an integrated
economic world.

MR. RUSSERT: But psychologically, the American people see their gasoline over
two dollars a gallon, and they see the Iraqis paying a nickel and they say,
what is this about?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, what it's about is a broken system that we are trying
to fix.

MR. RUSSERT: I saw this article in the New York Times. I'm going to ask you
about it because of your involvement as a heroic military man and as Secretary
of State. This is specialist Danielle Green. And here is her picture. She lost
her left hand in the war. She was known as "D Smooth," when she played
basketball for Notre Dame. And she said this: "They just don't want us there. I
personally don't think we should have gone into Iraq, not the way things have
turned out. A lot more people are going to get hurt, and for what?"

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I'm terribly sorry that she lost her hand. We regret
all losses of that kind, loss of life, the injuries that our young men and
women have suffered, and those of the coalition forces, and those of the Iraqi
people as well. But I hope she will see in time that her sacrifice was worth
it. That we are going to leave in place a nation that is better than the nation
that we found when we went in. With a people that believe in the rule of law,
that have defeated this insurgency, that are having democratic elections and
that will be a model for the rest of the region. And I don't think that's out
of our reach.

These are difficult times. The security situation is difficult. But if we were
to defeat this insurgency, say, tomorrow, if we could -- we can't -- it will
take us a while. Once this insurgency is put down, brought under control, then
I think you're going to see rapid reconstruction, you're going to see a rapid
movement to a constitution and to elections, and it is completely within our
reach to put in place the kind of system that we think the Iraqi people
deserve.

And guess what? The new Iraqi leadership wants that kind of system for its
people. You will be speaking to the president of the Interim Government a
little bit later on, and you will see that they are committed to democracy, the
rule of law -- a Shia majority, clearly, but protecting the rights of the
Sunnis and the Kurds and the other minorities within the country, something we
all can be proud of. And it takes the sacrifice of wonderful young men and
women often to achieve this kind of freedom, this kind of liberty.

MR. RUSSERT: We turn over the keys, if you will, on June 30th, just two weeks
from now. But the American people should not think that this is the end of the
violence. It could potentially still be a long, hot, bloody summer.

SECRETARY POWELL: Yes, it could be, and it's long and hot and bloody right now.
We see that these people don't want a better life for the Iraqi people, and
we're going to have to stay the course and show the kind of determination,
patience, that we have shown in previous conflicts.

MR. RUSSERT: As you try to oversee our foreign policy, the President oversee
the war in Iraq, this is the Gallup poll about U.S. attitudes on war. Whether
the war was just: World War II, overwhelmingly, 90 percent to seven percent;
Iraq 49 to 49. How much does that affect your ability to conduct policy?

SECRETARY POWELL: It makes it more difficult, because we have to explain to the
American people, explain to the world, why it was a just war and what it's all
about and what we're trying to accomplish. And when you have difficult
situations, as we're having now, with officials being assassinated and bombs
going off, people see this on television, and they begin to question. And we
have to keep reinforcing to the American people and to the rest of the world
why this was, one, a just war. Why it makes sense for us to stay the course.
And keep reminding people that a very tyrannical, terrible regime that filled
mass graves, that did terrible things to its own people, and that was a
destabilizing influence in the region, is gone.

And let's not forget that. They are gone. This insurgency has to be defeated.
And when it's defeated, then you will see that the process of democratization,
constitution writing, elections and reconstruction will move rapidly. And we
are going to be there to help the Iraqi people.

MR. RUSSERT: Some observers, Mr. Secretary, will say: "the primary rationale
for the war, weapons of mass destruction, have not been found. We are supposed
to be greeted as liberators, which is not the case. That a lot more than just
130,000 troops are truly necessary. That General Shinseki, the Army Chief of
Staff, who said we needed hundreds of thousands was probably more correct." Why
shouldn't people say that this war has been mismanaged from the very beginning?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, it's succeeded in its principal objective of
eliminating this regime. And the intention and capability that this regime had
to have weapons of mass destruction, even though we haven't found actual
stockpiles, we now don't have to worry about that intention or capability any
more. It's gone.

And, clearly, the insurgency has caused us more of a problem than we had
anticipated in the beginning. We did come as liberators, but the Iraqi people
want us to remain. You don't see any polls saying, "get out right away." They
want us to leave in due course, but right now this new government is asking us
to stay in order to help secure the country.

And let's not use the actions of just the insurgents as the reaction of the
entire population. What the entire population wants, they want jobs, they want
electricity, they want revenue coming in from their oil and they want us,
ultimately, to leave. They want their own forces to provide for their security.
And we are working toward those goals: building up the Iraqi forces to provide
their own security in due course, bringing our force levels down till we can go
home, and getting to the elections at the end of the year, a new government and
then a constitution next year.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Afghanistan because it's not been on the radar of
the American people very much. There was a sense after September 11th that we
went into Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban, and now things are all just fine,
which is far from the case, as you well know.

This is the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the Congress,
who put this out:

"Conditions in Afghanistan such as the deteriorating security situation, the
relative weakness of the central government, and the increase in opium
production, complicate the longer term reconstruction process and threaten its
ultimate success."

SECRETARY POWELL: There is much work to be done in Afghanistan, but a lot of
work has been accomplished and we shouldn't sell it short. President Karzai,
who you will have on your show in a few moments, has done a tremendous job. He
is a visionary leader. And when you think of where we were right after the
defeat of the Taliban, when there wasn't a single phone working, there is now a
government that is functioning.

It is slowly, but surely, extending its reach out and beyond the capital. It is
being challenged still by Taliban remnants and some al-Qaida presence, and they
also will have to be defeated. We're going to stick with the Afghan Government,
as they go about doing this. But they are now scheduled for free elections in
September and those elections are on track. And I think slowly, but surely, we
are going to be successful in Afghanistan. We are successful --

MR. RUSSERT: There are reports that --

SECRETARY POWELL: We are successful now.

MR. RUSSERT: There are reports that elections may be postponed again.

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, I've heard those reports, and we'll just have to wait
and see. But, right now, in my conversations with President Karzai, he is still
committed to having the elections in September.

MR. RUSSERT: How concerned are you about the dramatic increase in opium or
heroine production?

SECRETARY POWELL: It is a major problem. And we are working with our European
friends, especially the British, who have the lead on the opium reduction
programs in Afghanistan. President Karzai fully understands that this shadow
economy cannot be allowed to continue to exist. But it is a difficult problem
to get on top of, as we have discovered, with drug production in other parts of
the world.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to this report on global terrorism. Your credibility
being called into question. This is your Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage in April:

(Previously recorded videotape was played.)

DEPUTY SECRETARY ARMITAGE: Indeed, you will find in these pages, clear evidence
that we are prevailing in the fight.

MR. RUSSERT: In the fight on terrorism. And the report says this:

"There were 190 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight decrease from
the 198 attacks that occurred in 2002, a drop off of 45 percent from the level
in 2001 of 346 attacks. The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total
of international terrorist attacks since 1969."

And then two professors from Princeton, they took a look at this -- and from
Stanford -- and they concluded this:

"Yet, a careful review of the report and underlying data supports the opposite
conclusion: The number of significant terrorist acts increased from 124 in 2001
to 169 in 2003 -- 36 percent -- even using the State Department's official
standards The only verifiable information in the annual report indicates that
the number of terrorist events has risen each year since 2001, and in 2003
reached its highest level in more than 20 years."

Henry Waxman, the democratic Congressman from California, said that you are
manipulating data for political purposes.

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, we're not. The data that is in our report is incorrect.
If you read the narrative of the report, it makes it clear that the war on
terror is a difficult one, and that we're pursuing it with all of the means at
our disposal.

But something happened in the data collection and we're getting to the bottom
of it. Teams have been working for the last several days and all weekend long,
and I'll be having a meeting in the Department tomorrow with CIA, other
contributing agencies, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, and my own
staff, to find out how these numbers got into the report.

Some cutoff dates were shifted from the way it was done in the past. There is
nothing political about it. It was a data collection and reporting error and
we'll get to the bottom of it. We'll issue a corrected report. And I've talked
to Congressman Waxman.

MR. RUSSERT: Was it CIA data?

SECRETARY POWELL: It's a combination of data that flows in. And some of it is
CIA. The Terrorist Threat Integration Center compiles data and provides it to
us. But when you look at it in hindsight now, and you look at the analysis
given to me by Congressman Waxman and these two Congressmen, all sorts of alarm
bells should have gone off. And all sorts of, as I say to my staff, circuit
breakers should have dropped when we saw this data. And they didn't.

But I don't think there was anything political or policy-driven about it. It
was just data that was incorrect, or it wasn't properly measured, compared to
the way it was measured in previous years. And so, what we have to do is
normalize the data this past year, 2003, in the same way that we normalize data
in previous years. And we will be putting out that correct information, as fast
as we can.

MR. RUSSERT: But it is embarrassing.

SECRETARY POWELL: Very embarrassing. I am not a happy camper over this. We were
wrong.

MR. RUSSERT: You know, you take this report on terrorism, and the last time you
were here, about a month ago, Mr. Secretary, I asked about your presentation to
the United Nations, and this is what you said.

(Previously recorded videotape was played.)

SECRETARY POWELL: "But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and
wrong, and, in some cases, deliberately misleading, and for that I am
disappointed and I regret it."

MR. RUSSERT: Inaccurate, wrong, deliberately misleading on WMD and then this
report on terrorism. Why shouldn't the American people lose all confidence in
the information their government is giving them from the CIA about weapons of
mass destruction, about terrorism, and who knows what else?

SECRETARY POWELL: The term, "misleading," in the context of the earlier
interview, was that the sources were misleading. Not that the agency was
misleading, the sources were misleading.

With respect to this report, if you read the report, you will see that it, in
narrative form, gives a solid picture of the challenge we are facing with
terrorism. It doesn't downplay terrorism in the slightest. But, unfortunately,
the data that is within the report, the actual numbers of incidents, is off.
It's wrong. And I am regretful that this has happened, that we're going to get
it fixed. We're going to get it corrected. And that's the best I can do.

MR. RUSSERT: But the information given to you to go before the United Nations,
also inaccurate and wrong. What's wrong? What's going on?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, we've got to get to the bottom of that, Tim. And with
respect to this terror report, we're going to get to the bottom of it tomorrow.

MR. RUSSERT: Are you pleased that Director of CIA George Tenet resigned?

SECRETARY POWELL: George is a good friend of mine, and it was a personal
decision of his. I regret that I am not going to be able to work with him. He's
a dedicated individual. He's had many successes during his years as director of
the CIA, and there have been some areas where I know that he would rather have
seen things turn out differently. But he has served this nation very, very well
with great distinction and honor.

MR. RUSSERT: When you look at the CIA information on weapons of mass
destruction. Former President Clinton said Saddam had weapons of mass
destruction, as well as current President Bush. The UN inspectors, the Russian,
French and German intelligence agencies said he had weapons of mass
destruction. What happened? How could there have been such a colossal
intelligence failure?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, maybe because what we were all looking at was a body of
evidence that gave you every reason to believe that he did have weapons of mass
destruction. He had the intention. He used them. He stiffed the UN for 12
years. He had the infrastructure. He had the capability. The only thing we
haven't been able to find are actual, current stockpiles of such weapons.
Everything else was there.

Everything else was there with respect to capability and intention. And any
reasonable person looking at this regime, looking at the threat inherent in
that intention and capability would have come to the conclusion, based on
unanswered questions -- remember, the basis for the stockpiles were unanswered
questions about what he had in the past and what happened to it, and some
inferential evidence we had with respect to bunkers and other information we
had, that gave any reasonable person basis to believe that there were
stockpiles, in addition to capability and intention.

We haven't found those stockpiles. But there is not doubt in my mind that he
never lost the intention or the capability, and if he had ever been freed from
international inspection, of the pressure of the international community and
just left alone, and we hadn't acted, you would see Saddam Hussein still there
still, now developing stockpiles with the freedom to do so because he is not
under pressure.

MR. RUSSERT: Before you go, Mr. Secretary, the last time you were on, one month
ago, I received thousands of letters and telegrams about this scene, let's just
watch it for a second.

SECRETARY POWELL: Tim, don't swing the camera away from me again.

(Laughter.)

(Previously recorded videotape was played.)

MR. RUSSERT: "Finally, Mr. Secretary, in February of 2003, you placed your
enormous

(volume turned down)"

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Secretary, you answered the question, and because of that, we
are internally grateful. We'd like to present you the First Annual Colin Powell
Palm Tree Award for answering questions under adverse circumstances.
(Laughter). You'll forever be in the annals of "Meet the Press." We thank you
again for joining us today.

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, Tim, thank you very much. I honor this. A very
dedicated staffer of mine knew that I had two other interviews to do and she
was trying to serve me, but did not know you were still asking a question. And
I'm glad we got the question in. And I accept this in the spirit in which it is
offering.

MR. RUSSERT: And thank you for your answer, as always.

2004/667


[End]


Released on June 13, 2004

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