Interview with Hon. R. James Woolsey

The Center for Security Policy is pleased to announce the second in a series of interviews with members of its Military Committee and National Security Advisory Council. These individuals are among the foremost national security practitioners and thinkers of our time and it is the Center’s hope that these interviews will increase public awareness concerning the security policies of the United States.

The Center was honored to have as its second guest former Director of Central Intelligence and the Center’s National Security Advisory Council Co-Chairman, Hon. James Woolsey. He spoke about some of the most important issues of the day.

We asked Director Woolsey whether President Bush had the same opportunities to confront al-Qaeda — during the eight months prior to September 11th — that President Clinton had during the eight years of his administration. According to Director Woolsey, President Bush "had approximately one-twelfth of the overall time that President Clinton had to work on terrorism issues and even after the first major al-Qaeda attack in the fall of 1995 President Clinton had five and a half years until early 2001 to work on the terrorism issue." Furthermore, he characterized President Clinton’s approach to fighting terrorism as "principally one of prosecuting terrorists." Director Woolsey advised, however, that during both administrations "many of our country’s institutions were not geared toward dealing with terrorist attacks in the United States."

Part of the institutional fix following the attacks on 9/11 was the USA PATRIOT Act. For example, Director Woolsey pointed out that this legislation changed "rule 6E of the federal rules of criminal procedure which made it much easier for the FBI to provide information about terrorists to the CIA than was possible before the act was passed." He recommended that the PATRIOT ACT, in general, be extended by Congress past its 2005 expiration date.

As for the situation in Iraq today, Director Woolsey believes that there are three main groups within Iraq that need to be defeated:

the residual Baathists and those who support them inside the Sunni Triangle; the outside terrorists who are coming in, some of them from Syria, some from other countries, some of them probably affiliated with AQ, to help the Baathists; and the Islamist Shiite group reporting to Muqtada al-Sadr who essentially, in my judgment, takes his orders from the ruling Mullahs in Tehran and is, for all practical purposes, the head of Hezbollah in Iraq.

He also faulted the disagreements within both the Bush and Clinton administrations, as well as the "institutional opposition" in the State Department and CIA, "to working with the Iraqi resistance before the war." In his view, "we should have had thousands" of Iraqi nationals go into Iraq with coalition forces, not hundreds.

The Center would like to thank Director Woolsey for taking the time to participate in the second of what will be a series of interviews conducted throughout the year by the Center for Security Policy.

To read the entire transcript click here.