Tenet: 'It is not possible to protect everything'

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  No, no.  I’m wondering how they are going to vote based on fear and what they should be afraid of.

TENET:  Well, everybody needs to de-politicize it.  I mean, this is not—this is a generational challenge that will face Republicans and Democrats over the next 25 years.  We are going to have to make decisions as a country about what—we should be having a conversation right now:  What do we need to be doing to deter the prospects of another attack?

You cannot build a perfect mousetrap.  How vigilant should we be? 

Have we lost our sense of urgency?  Should we continue to think about our infrastructure in different ways?  The game here is about constant vigilance...

MATTHEWS:  Where do you lean, towards more law enforcement, less civil liberties, more torture, more checking of people at airports?  I mean, where would you go if you were president?

TENET:  What the country needs to do, what the political leadership of the country needs to do is figure out where on that continuum we want to reside.

MATTHEWS:  How far are you willing to go?

TENET:  Make those—no, it is not an intelligence...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  No, I want your advice.  No, I want to ask you a question.  You know more than we know.  Do we have to be tougher in letting people through airports?  Do we have to be tougher with immigration?

TENET:  You have to get more agile.  You must be tough.  You have to be agile.  You have to risk—you cannot protect the entire country. 

It is not possible to protect everything.

MATTHEWS:  OK.  You believe, I have heard your interviews, that they would go for iconic targets, big things like the World Trade Center. 

They don’t—because I have always wondered, we have got missionaries all around the world from America, you know?  Christian missionaries all around the world.  We have got business people all around the world.  We have tourists in every capital of the world right now.

They could pick off 20 Americans on any capital on any day they wanted to.  Why don’t they do that?

TENET:  In foreign countries, Chris, they do go after softer—if you look at the attacks...

MATTHEWS:  Well, why aren’t they—I thought after 9/11 they would be going around the world grabbing Americans and killing them.  Why aren’t they doing that?

TENET:  Well, they have killed a lot of people and sometimes—you know, in 2003, in the Riyadh bombings, 10 Americans died.  They are killing Muslims.  They are killing Americans.  They are killing foreigners.  They did it in Bali.  They killed Australians.

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