This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," September 11, 2011. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices, secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.
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BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: President Bush 10 years ago tonight.
We are honored this evening to have a terrific line-up in our all-star panel. Retired general Richard Myers was acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs on 9/11. He was confirmed as chairman a few days later and served until 2005. He's the author of the book, "Eyes on the Horizon."
Dick Cheney, of course, was vice president for President George W. Bush. His new book is called, "In My Time." Donald Rumsfeld was Defense Secretary on 9/11. He also has a book out, "Known and Unknown." And retired general Jack Keane was Army vice chief of staff from 1999 to 2003. He's a Fox News military analyst. And we're waiting on the book to come out.
Welcome, General. And welcome, panel. Thank you very much.
I want to start with that day and the first moments, as you look back and when you knew we were under attack. Vice President Cheney, let's start with you. Your recollections of those first moments?
FORMER VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Well, I was in my West Wing office. Secretary called in and said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I turned on my television in time to see the second one hit.
And shortly after that, staff began to gather around. And I talked to the president on the telephone. He was in Florida. And then my Secret Service agent came in, said, Sir, we have to leave immediately. He put one hand on my belt, one on my shoulder and propelled me out of my office and down the hall, headed for the bunker under the White House, and told me en route that there was a plane out at Dulles, headed towards Crown, the code word for the White House, at 500 miles an hour. That turned out to be American Flight 77 that went in and hit the Pentagon. But that's how my day began.
BAIER: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld?
DONALD RUMSFELD, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, I was in the Pentagon and had been meeting with a group of congressmen, trying to persuade them that 10 years after the end of the Cold War, we'd skimped on our intelligence capabilities and we'd reduced our defense investments in a way that was harmful and that we needed to increase the defense budget under President George W. Bush.
And I was told by my military assistant about the first plane and assumed it was accident, and then told about the second one. And it was clearly not an accident. Shortly thereafter, when I was getting -- still meeting with my CIA briefer, the Pentagon was hit.
And I went down the hall and downstairs when the smoke got too bad, went outside and out in the apron, the grass out there, were just hundreds and hundreds of pieces of metal, small pieces of metal. This plane had impacted the Pentagon at 500 miles an hour, filled with jet fuel, and the place was burning and people were streaming out, trying to save themselves.
BAIER: Vice President Cheney, in your book, you detail a phone call that you made to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. You were in the presidential emergency operations center. Secretary Rumsfeld, you were in the national military command center. You made this phone call I guess at 10:39, according to the transcript. And it really dealt with some confusion about the communication and what was going on.
CHENEY: There was a lot of confusion that morning. When I arrived in the bunker, I was told there were six airplanes that had been hijacked -- they had actual flight numbers -- but there were only four -- and told there was a car bomb that had gone off at the State Department. That turned out not to be true.
On the other hand, when they said there was a plane coming in from Pennsylvania towards Washington, that was true. That was United Flight 93. So the information flow, basically, was -- there was a lot of misinformation, which is not unusual under those circumstances.
BAIER: And you thought maybe a plane had been shot down.
CHENEY: That was one possibility. I'd passed along -- I'd been asked by an officer in the PEOC whether or not our pilots were authorized to shoot down planes that wouldn't divert. The president and I had talked about that previously, and I passed along that order.
And when Don and I got on the telephone together then a few minutes later, really, that's one of the subjects that we talked about. We thought the possibility existed that we'd shot down what turned out to be United 93. We hadn't, thankfully, but if -- we didn't have a plan, really, that was in a position to intercept it.
BAIER: General Myers, your first recollections?
GEN. RICHARD MYERS (RET.), FORMER JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: First recollections were, I was on Capitol Hill getting ready for my confirmation hearing to be chairman. I was meeting with then Senator Max Cleland from Georgia, and got there at 9:00 o'clock. First tower had been hit. We saw it on the TV. Nobody knew what that was about. Went into the meeting. The second tower was hit, so it was a very short meeting.
And I come out, there's a phone call from General Ed Eberhart out at North American Aerospace Defense Command, saying, We've got all these hijack codes, airplanes that are telling people they've been hijacked. And he says, It's very confusing. We've to land them and we'll sort it out on the ground.
And we headed back towards the Pentagon, and en route got word that the Pentagon had been hit, came across the 14th Street bridge, and there was the Pentagon, this iconic symbol of our military strength, with flames and black smoke.
And I went to the national military command center, and my first question was, where's the secretary, because we got a lot of things to do here. And he was still outside, working the triage of those who had been injured as the plane crashed into the -- into the Pentagon. And he showed up shortly thereafter actually.
BAIER: General Keane?
GEN. JACK KEANE (RET.), FMR. ARMY VICE CHIEF OF STAFF, FOX MILITARY ANALYST: Yeah, I was in my office in the Pentagon, and the door flung open, and one of my sergeants ran across the cavernous offices we all have in the Pentagon and said, you got to look at the TV.
I'm a New York kid, so when I saw that plane that hit the first building, I suspected it was terrorism -- blue sky day. I called my operations officer (INAUDIBLE) the operations center up to full manning, the Army's operations center, had subsequent conversations after the second one hit about an airplane that had come into the vicinity of Washington, D.C., and had turned south. He was picking it up on an FAA net.
And during that conversation, we were talking about, what do we do about evacuating buildings in Washington and evacuating this building? Then it hit the building as we're having that conversation.
My desk moved. The whole office shook. I told my people, call your homes, tell them you're OK and get out. I kept my XO and my aide. We took some T-shirts, and we went in -- down the hallway, you know, through some white smoke, then in some black smoke to give some people some hand getting out of there. Then my guys did kind of what the secretary's did, said, Sir, you got to go to the operations center and let's leave this to other people.
And we went on down there, and my people were coming in from out -- out there, and they had one story after another about what was taking place. I knew there had been a lot of heroism that day, so I called the -- the chief (INAUDIBLE) military history, told him to get over here the next day and capture this history of this new battlefield and a new war.
BAIER: We are dealing with new threats right now. We will talk about that with our special all-star panel after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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JOHN BRENNAN, CHIEF WHITE HOUSE COUNTERTERRORISM ADVISER: We know that it is specific related to both Washington and New York, trying to carry out some type of attack here. It is credible in terms of the source that it comes from. And what we're trying to do is to put the pieces together. We are trying to be as vigilant as possible. We're trying to ensure that we're able to tap into all of those databases that we have, to correlate the bits and pieces of information that are coming in. But we are taking this very seriously.
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BAIER: President Obama's counterterrorism adviser talking about a new, specific threat that the U.S. is facing that the administration is dealing with.
We're back with our special panel. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, you've looked at a lot of intelligence, similar things, threats during your time as Defense Secretary, and Vice President Cheney, all of you, have seen specific threats. What's going on behind the scenes now, dealing with this kind of thing?
RUMSFELD: Well, of course, initially, they have to make a judgment whether they want to announce it. And you can't really call up the additional police people and firemen and security people unless you say there's a reason because they'll wonder why they're being called up. So seems to me, they've done exactly the right thing.
They obviously have scraps of information that aren't conclusive, but they made a decision they wanted additional help on the streets and in New York and Washington. And so they issued the alert and are proceeding to try to find additional information, to see if they can't thwart whatever attempt might be made.
BAIER: Vice President Cheney?
CHENEY: All I know is what I've seen in the papers, Bret. But my sense of it is the fact that they've gone public and with this level of activity is there must be more reason to believe this is a valid threat than ordinarily would be the case, in terms of sort of the run-of-the-mill reporting you see every day.
BAIER: They say, General Keane, that it's from overseas and it's very specific and that it might be a car bomb in New York or D.C. To get that level of information, as the Defense Secretary and vice president mentioned, out there in the public, is an interesting choice.
KEANE: Ya know. When you get that kind of specificity, it usually means that they have a reliable source who's talking to them about some level of detail and he's been credible in the past. I suspect that's what's happened here.
BAIER: General Myers?
MYERS: I think what it tells us, actually, is that while the al Qaeda and their ilk are probably operationally constrained today, that they're not out. And I think it reminded everybody right around 9/11 that this is still a very real threat to us. And I believe they have some -- by the time they get this specific, as Jack said, they've got some pretty good intelligence from something, either an intercept or somehow, they've got some pretty good scraps of information.
BAIER: Vice President Cheney, where do you see the status of radical Islamic extremism as far as the terror threat? Obviously, this is a specific threat, but overall, where do you assess it to be today?
CHENEY: Well, I hear talk that al Qaeda is finished or close to being finished. I think we've done pretty serious damage to al Qaeda, obviously, when bin Laden was taken out. But I -- well, one of the things I was always concerned about was there are other groups out there, some of them affiliated with al Qaeda that have similar goals and objectives. And I think it'd be a big mistake for us to assume that somehow, the threat is over.
It may be somewhat diminished, but it's very hard to make that kind of a judgment. And I think it's very important that we keep up our guard and our vigilance and assume that they're still out there doing everything they can to mount another attack.
BAIER: Your sense has changed, though, from the Bush administration to now, the threat?
RUMSFELD: There's no question but that a lot of al Qaeda have been captured or killed. And that's a good thing. The reality is, however, I don't personally feel that I have a good grip on the number of people being trained in radical madrassas, the number of people being -- soliciting money and raising money to support them.
I think that this -- our absence of knowledge of that or certainty about it, metrics that we can actually track it, I think is a problem. And of course, it's a competition of ideas, and we're barely engaging in that competition of ideas. This administration, and even our administration, was reluctant to be seen as being against a religion. And of course, we're not against the Muslim religion. We are against radical Islamists who are out there determined to kill innocent men, women and children.
BAIER: We have not had a successful major attack here since 9/11. We will talk about why or possibly why as our discussion continues on this special edition of "Special Report."
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: Now and in the future the United States will work closely with a global coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the materials, technology, and expertise to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction and the entire world must know that we will take whatever action is necessary to defend our freedom and our security.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: Vice President Cheney back in 2002. We're back with our special panel, Retired General Richard Myers, the former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and former Army Vice Chief of Staff General Jack Keane. Vice President Cheney, you were making that speech ahead of what was the launch into the Iraq war and the criticism has been that Iraq took the eyes off of Afghanistan. How do you respond to that criticism?
CHENEY: Well, I don't -- I don't buy that argument, basically. I was very concerned about Iraq. Many of us were. The Clinton administration had been before we ever arrived. We had great concerns, I did, certainly, especially after 9/11 that the next time we got an attack like that coming in at the United States that the terrorists would have something far deadlier than airline tickets and box cutters, that they were actively seeking to acquire a nuclear device or a biological agent of some kind and Saddam Hussein, given his track record over the years, was somebody that we were deeply concerned about as a possible place where the terrorists could meet up with the capability that would allow them to launch that kind of deadly attack against the U.S.
BAIER: You're shaking your head.
MYERS: Well, I -- I absolutely agree with that and I think that's still -- that's the threat today is that nexus between weapons of mass destruction by an extremist who are willing to kill innocent men, women, and children as we have said and, you know, if it's Iraq is no longer going to be the source but where is that source going to come from, is it going to be from Iran that has a nuclear capability or where are they going to get -- or North Korea, people that are willing to proliferate these kind of items that -- I think our bleakest day in the White House was when we got a report, I can remember your face -- when we got a report that al Qaeda had obtained fissile material. It turned out later not to be true but for about 24 hours we thought that had actually happened and we were trying to figure out, ok, how do we defend ourselves from an attack that has a nuclear component, whether an explosion or radiological device or whatever.
RUMSFELD: Furthermore, the data simply contradicts the argument that Iraq was a distraction from Afghanistan. The attacks, the incidents, the problems in Afghanistan shortly after the Taliban were thrown out of Kabul and the al Qaeda were pushed out of the country, the incidents of violence went down and the -- the situation in Afghanistan did not need additional attention and it was a -- basically a successful operation. Now, to be sure, the Taliban went into Pakistan. They regrouped and they're now making -- putting pressure to come back in but at the time that -- that in 2003, that wasn't the problem.
BAIER: General Keane, just today a bomb went off wounding 77 American servicemen in Afghanistan. The situation there, obviously, is not secure throughout the country.
KEANE: We're far from it, but, listen, the momentum has turned to our favor. The president's decision to put the 30,000 surge forces in there has made a stunning difference. The south has turned completely around and those safe havens and support zones, they're out of there. They tried to come back this Spring and Summer and they've lost every fight that they've been in. They have to go to softer targets now to be sure. Along with that, I must say that the President's decision to take those forces out as early as he is taking them out, I believe, does put the mission at some risk, much more risk than the military commanders wanted -- wanted to have.
BAIER: Vice President Cheney, you've been -- you were very critical of the Obama administration at the beginning. As you've seen it develop on the issue of foreign policy and fighting the war on terror, how do you see it now?
CHENEY: Well, I agree very much with Jack that we've made major progress in Afghanistan but I worry that the decision to bring home the surge troops early is going to raise the risk, if you will, in that part of the world. I think that the administration itself, in terms of policy, the main thing -- one of the main things I was concerned about was that we're going to prosecute people in the intelligence community who'd carried out our counterterrorism policies. They've now backed off that, supposedly, but I thought that was a terrible precedent to set and they've had to keep Guantanamo open because it makes sense, it's a good facility. So, there were a series of decisions where they have had to adopt our policies but I still don't have the confidence, obviously, in the Obama administration that I'd like to have.
BAIER: Secretary Rumsfeld?
RUMSFELD: I have -- I have no doubt in my mind but that the structures that were put into place, the coalition that was fashioned during the Bush administration of 90 countries sharing intelligence and tracking bank accounts, the Guantanamo Bay, military commissions, indefinite detention, The Patriot Act, these things have helped to protect the American people and I'm greatly relieved that they're still in place well into the Obama administration and I think they -- they found that it's quite different campaigning against those things and once you have to govern I think they've discovered that these were tough decisions but right decisions.
BAIER: As this economic environment sets in and the administration is looking at cuts, Congress is looking at cuts, Defense Department is on the table, you said in an interview this past week about cutting the Defense Department budget, quote, "If we make that mistake, we're doomed to suffer another attack of some kind, and our intelligence will be less strong and effective." Do you think there's not fat to be cut from the military budget or the intelligence community budget?
RUMSFELD: Oh, of course. In a big bureaucracy there's always waste. I mean, the Congress stuffed $10 billion down the Department of Defense's throat every year that we didn't want for things that didn't relate to Defense. But, anyone who suggests you can deal with this terrible debt crisis off the Pentagon, off the Department of Defense, is just flat wrong. That isn't where the money is. The money is in entitlements and today we're -- when I came to Washington in 1957 and 8, 9, in the Eisenhower, Johnson, Kennedy era, we were spending 10% of gross domestic product on defense. Today it's 4%, plus or minus, depending on how you calculate it. So -- so, it is a myth that -- that you can solve the debt problem by looking at the Defense Department --
BAIER: General...
RUMSFELD: -- and if we make that mistake, we make a terrible mistake.
BAIER: General Keane, do you sense that in the military brass, a fear about how this is all going to come down?
KEANE: Yes, make no mistake about it, the -- the work that Secretary Gates did in dealing with some of the shortfalls we had in our programs, he cut a number of programs, stopped others, he took $100 billion out of the so-called fat. The Obama administration asked him to take another $85 billion. I think he fought them over that, lost that fight, and now there's another $400 billion on the table over a 10 year period. That will clearly reduce the capabilities of the United States. That -- what that means is we have less capability to do the kind of business we need to protect the American people and our national interests and we go to fewer places as a result of it.
BAIER: Vice President Cheney, under your Bush administration it started this massive expansion of, especially the intelligence contracting and the infrastructure, do you think there's fat to be cut from -- from all of that?
CHENEY: No, I -- I agree very much with the Secretary and with General Keane. What I always remember is how long it takes to turn it around. Once you've cut it and eliminated divisions or intelligence capabilities or whatever it might be, it takes a very long time to rebuild that capability. You can't just write a check next week and have it back. I always remember going out to meet with and thank Ronald Reagan in ‘91 after the Gulf War for what he'd done 10 years earlier with respect to defense spending because that's what made it possible for us to defeat Saddam Hussein in Kuwait. The fact of the matter is that you cannot cut without having long-term consequences for it and the kind of thing they're talking about now I think would do enormous lasting damage to our military and security capabilities.
BAIER: So, what does the future hold for the war on terror? That's next with our special panel.
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RUMSFELD: This will take a long sustained effort. It will require the support of the American people as well as our friends and allies around the world.
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BAIER: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, back after 9/11, now back with our special panel looking forward. General Myers, what about the fight against terror now, how it stands, how the administration has done, and where it heads from here.
MYERS: Well, my personal opinion is that we probably, in the overall fight, overused the military instrument of power. The other instruments of power diplomatic, political, economic, informational probably could be brought to bear on some of these issues like education in the Islam world - - Islamic world where people are not prepared to accommodate the 21st century. I mean, there's a lot of things that probably could be done by the international community that haven't been done. I think the United States has done a good job in protecting ourselves and our friends and allies for the most part. I -- I think this is a decades long issue. This isn't going to -- this wasn't over when bin Laden was killed. It's not over today. It's not going to be over for probably generations as we deal with folks that want to become violent extremists and the United States happens to be a very convenient target.
BAIER: General Keane?
KEANE: Well, tactical victory by the al Qaeda, certainly, in New York and Washington, D.C., but I always felt it was a strategic blunder because it would bring to their region of the world what they fundamentally did not want, and that's American ideas, democracy, and capitalism. We freed, liberated, 55 million people in that part of the world in Iraq and Afghanistan and now they are a fledgling democracy. That's a dagger to the heart of the radical Islamists and it's taking place there. The Arab Spring, nobody's in the streets demonstrating for radical Islam, they're in the streets with a window of democracy. They want our political reform, our social justice, and our economic opportunity.
BAIER: Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, you both have books out. Did President Bush know what was in your books before they came out?
CHENEY: I sent him an advanced copy of mine about two weeks before it came out but --
BAIER: Have you heard from him?
CHENEY: I -- well, I talked to him at the time and I've since got a message that he thought it was fine.
BAIER: Fine?
CHENEY: Fine. Well, that was the word that was used.
BAIER: And you?
RUMSFELD: I sent the president an advanced copy also and I've seen him since and we visited about it, had a cup of coffee with him in Dallas not too long ago and I was at the Pentagon with him yesterday, as a matter of fact, where he put a wreath there in a private ceremony.
BAIER: Both of you were pretty critical of then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in different sections of your book. Vice President Cheney, she responded recently saying, quote, "You can talk about policy differences without suggesting that your colleague somehow misled the president. You know, I don't appreciate the attack on my integrity that that implies." How do you respond to that?
CHENEY: Well, she's got her own book coming out shortly and I'm sure she'll -- she'll take advantage of that opportunity to -- to present her point of view. But, no, I -- I tried to keep it on policy issues. I have a great deal of admiration for Secretary Rice. I tried to hire her once before we ever got involved in the Bush administration to serve on a corporate board. I've known her for a long time and, obviously, we just fundamentally disagreed on some of the material I wrote about in the book.
BAIER: And you have similar recollections of that time?
RUMSFELD: Well, that's a tough job. We need to reform our institutions in this country and internationally to be sure. The National Security post is asked to do almost an impossible task. You -- you -- these -- these different institutions come up straight. In the Department of Defense we have made changes. We now have Goldwater-Nichols where we brought the services and changed their responsibilities and created combatant commands. We've not done that within the Department -- the United States government and these institutions were created during the Truman administration, the CIA, the National Security Council, the Department of Defense. They need to be adjusted for the Information Age to be sure. I - - I must say, I agree with Dick Myers and believe that the -- this war against radical Islamists is not going to be one with bullets alone and it -- it is much more like the Cold War than it's like World War II or Vietnam or Korea. It -- it is a different thing where we have to engage all elements of national power and compete with the ideas because the terrorists, their goal isn't to kill people, their goal is to terrorize, it's to alter our behavior and that's the one thing free people can't allow them to do.
BAIER: We will be back with some final thoughts from our special panel on this special edition of Special Report.
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MYERS: I firmly believe that this is the most important task that the U.S. military has been handed since the second World War and what's at stake here is no less than our freedom to exist as an American people. So, there's no option but success. We owe it to our families and to the family of peace -- peace-loving nations to prevail in this fight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: A little more than a month after the 9/11 attacks then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Myers. Let's get some final thoughts from our special panel on this day, 10 years later. General Myers, let's start with you.
MYERS: Well, obviously, a solemn day. It is every year, has been now for 10 years. At the Pentagon ceremony today, you know, that you talk to the families of those who lost loved ones that day or injured, I mean, there are lots of tears as you -- as you think about the impact on their lives. Also, we need think about the impact on -- on the United States of America and our friends and allies and freedom-loving nations. I mean, this changed -- changed war in a way. I mean, it brought asymmetric warfare front and center and it also told us that the United States is no longer protected just because we're between two friendly countries and -- and two big oceans. So, I think going forward, I think we have a lot to think about and we've talked about it some on this panel, is what kind of military establishment are we going to have in the rest of this 21st century and the decades it's going to take to fight this conflict and with the budget battles looming I just hope somewhere in all the budget battles that we hear the words strategy and risk, so we know what we're cutting and what the risks of those cuts will be because we could be a vastly different military in -- in -- in a decade or two. It doesn't take very long to change everything.
BAIER: Vice President Cheney?
CHENEY: Well, I remain convinced Bret, that the biggest threat we face is terrorist organization equipped/armed with deadlier technology than they've ever had before and that given, just as there have been enormous improvements in our technology from a military standpoint, precision guided munitions, drones, etc., I think the same kind of technology, ultimately, is going to make the terrorists a bigger threat, that a handful of individuals now can do enormous damage if they can get their hands on that stuff and it's going to require us as much as anytime since 9/11 to continue to be vigilant, to continue to spend money and to field the resources to make certain they never get off that next attack.
BAIER: Secretary Rumsfeld?
RUMSFELD: I was with General Myers at the memorial ceremony at the Pentagon today and -- and the speakers, Vice President Biden and Secretary of Defense Panetta and Admiral Mullen all spoke to the families to be sure but they also spoke to the wonderful men and women in the uniformed military serving all across the world and what an outstanding job they're doing, how professional they are, how dedicated they are, and how courageous they are. We are -- we have an all volunteer military and it's a wonderful thing to think that each one of those individuals is there because they wanted to be there, they wanted to serve, they raised their hand and said send me and I think it's -- it's a day to remember the 3,000 that were lost and their families and their friends but it's also a day to express our appreciation to the men and women in uniform.
BAIER: General Keane?
KEANE: Had the al Qaeda, I believe, knew they couldn't defeat our military but they wanted to break the will of our people and they believed that we were weak, and I think what we did on 9/11, we found the soul of America again, our strength, our values, our character produced determination. We were inspired by firefighters, police, heroes in the Pentagon and then we began a war that's been on for 10 years. Out of that war has come the new greatest generation. All volunteers, as Secretary Rumsfeld mentioned. We've lost 6,200 of them, twice what we lost on 9/11. We've had over 20,000 of them wounded. The Army and the Marine Corp bear the brunt of the war and there is no shortage of volunteers. They are not war weary. We are in the tenth year and we still have all the volunteers we need to prosecute a war. What an amazing group of people representing, I think, America's character.
BAIER: Secretary Rumsfeld, you've often said that the U.S. government has to be right 100% of the time and the terrorists only have to be right once. Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, knowing what you know about how things are set up, do you fear another major attack? Vice President?
CHENEY: I do, I really do and I -- I -- I worry that as we get farther and farther from the events of 9/11 that there are more and more people in our society who want to sort of write it off as a one-off affair, it'll never happen again. We've got this notion that somehow we overreacted after 9/11. I don't think we did at all. I think it was very important for us to take the steps we took to prevent another attack. It's been successful but we need to keep it up.
BAIER: Secretary Rumsfeld?
RUMSFELD: There's no question but that instead of 3,000, a biological weapon could result in 300,000 Americans dead and the only way to deal with that is not think you can defend against it everywhere but to keep putting pressure on terrorists and keep putting pressure on the countries that harbor terrorists and to maintain the coalition of countries that have done such a -- a terrific job of organizing and pursuing and persisting and this is, I think, why we've been so fortunate this past decade.
BAIER: Generals, Mr. Secretary, Mr. Vice President, thank you very much on this special day. We appreciate you coming in. That's it for our special panel. A final look at today's memorials when we come back.
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