Tenet: 'It is not possible to protect everything'

You said, in one of the interviews recently that, in your gut—I think it’s in the book—that in your gut, you know al Qaeda’s out there.  Give me a picture of what’s out there, right now, facing us.

TENET:  Well, Tim—

MATTHEWS:  Chris.

TENET:  I’m sorry—Chris—wrong guy!

MATTHEWS:  Tim was yesterday.

TENET:  If you think about this from my perspective, this is still the crown jewel target for this group.  We’ve done very well against them.  We’ve hurt them quite badly.  We’ve hurt their leadership quite badly.  Between 19 -- it took eight years between the World Trade Center and 9/11.  They have an enormous sense of patience, they are a sophisticated intelligence organization.

MATTHEWS:  Where are they?  Are they in Hamburg, Germany?  Are they in Afghanistan?  Are they—where are they?  Are they in Pakistan?

TENET:  In the mid-1990s—where are they.  This organization, in the mid-1990s, we told the President of the United States, This is an organization that operates in 68 countries.  They’re in Southeast Asia, they’re in North Africa, they’re in Central Asia.  They’re probably in the north—the leadership is probably, on the basis of what I’ve read, in the northwest frontier of Pakistan.  They’re in Europe.

Here’s the point—

MATTHEWS:  How did they—you guys had them under NSA security—under NSA surveillance right now.  They can’t get on a radiophone, they can’t get on a cellphone.

TENET:  This is a—Chris, this is a very agile intelligence organization.  We worked very, very hard at them to put bits and pieces together that help us try to understand what they’re going to do next.

My operational presumption has to be, I don’t know this to be true. 

They come in with the first wave, on 9/11, right?  They are smart guys, they understand the country is going to react, is there a second wave here?

There is nothing I ever heard, particularly as the summer of ‘04 came about and we had an election coming on, and Madrid occurred.  And then we had reporting that there was a group inside the United States, a non-Arab group.

Then we had reporting that said there were people who were going to infiltrate in through Mexico.  There is nothing I ever learned that relieved my anxiety that these are people who are here and maybe patiently waiting.

The point of this whole matter is, is as you well, the politics of this and how should people vote.  You know, we know...

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