confRontAtion And consensus 353
what made you think that we had the luxury of that much time—even
seven months, much less three years, before we could cure this particular
problem?”
“Well, let me answer two ways,” Rumsfeld said. “Number one, I didn’t
come up with the three years. I tend to scrupulously avoid predicting that
I am smart enough to know how long something’s going to take because
I know I don’t know. Where that number came from, I don’t know. In fact,
dealing with the terrorism threat is going to take a lot longer than three
years. And the other concern we had was that we had precious little...
information about the groups in Afghanistan... .And the part you left
out was that we decided—I decided, the president decided, everyone
decided—quite early that we had to put U.S. forces in that country. And
that was not a part of that plan. That was something that came along after
September 11th.”
“Well, Mr. Secretary, that’s a good answer. But it isn’t an answer to the
question that I asked you,” Gorton said. “The question that I asked you
was: What made you think even when you took over and got these first
briefings, given the history of al-Qaida and its successful attacks on
Americans that we had the luxury of even seven months before we could
make any kind of response, much less three years?”
“And my answer was on point,” Rumsfeld bristled. “I said I didn’t
come up with three years, and I can’t defend that number. I don’t know
where that came from. With respect to seven months, I’ve answered. My
testimony today lays out what was done during that period. Do you have—
you phrase it, do you have the luxury of seven months? In reflecting on
what happened on September 11th, the question is, obviously, the Good
Lord willing, things would have happened prior to that that could have
stopped it. But something to have stopped that would have had to happen
months and months and months beforehand, not five minutes or not one
month or two months or three months. And the counter argument, it
seems to me, is do you have the luxury of doing what was done before and
simply just heaving some cruise missiles into the thing and not doing it
right? I don’t know. We thought not. It’s a judgment.”^21
The commission concluded that Rumsfeld’s prepared statement of-
fered some major truths. “Even if bin Laden had been captured or killed
in the weeks before September 11th,” Rumsfeld submitted, “no one I know
believes that it would necessarily have prevented September 11th. Killing
bin Laden would not have removed al-Qaida’s sanctuary in Afghanistan.
Moreover, the sleeper cells that flew the aircraft into the World Trade
Towers and the Pentagon were already in the United States months before