Tenet: 'It is not possible to protect everything'

You need to think—they think about the rest of the world somewhat differently than they think about us.  This target, multiple spectacular attacks, we want to hurt the United States commensurate with its standing as a superpower, which is why my big worry is their fixation with the development, acquisition of a nuclear capability, chemical and biological weapons.

They understand, you have got thousands of nuclear weapons in your arsenal, one makes those irrelevant from their perspective.  And how they would be viewed by people they are trying to recruit, get money from, because they look at this—you know, they look at this in broad historic terms.

You know?  I’m convinced they look at this and say, you know, the Roman Empire once fell.  Well, we are going to make this American empire fall and we are going to do it in a way that demonstrates that fundamentally they are weak and can’t stop us.

So we have got to be vigilant.  We have got to be tough.

MATTHEWS:  Where do you think they are going to get it, from an old Russian engineer who needs money?

TENET:  I don’t know the answer to that question.

MATTHEWS:  I want to ask—you do know...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS:  Are they more likely to buy it than build it?

TENET:  They are trying to buy it.  So we need to make a Manhattan-like effort, where is the fissile materials?  Where are the scientists?  We have got to go talk to countries and say, where is your fissile material?  Have you accounted for it?

MATTHEWS:  Have we done a good job with Ukraine and the other Soviet republics, at making sure that their nuclear capabilities have been locked up, or not?

TENET:  We’ve done well on the weapons side.  I think that that’s not in question.  Nunn-Lugar and all those things we did, those are very positive things.

Now what we need to do is make the same kind of effort on the fissile material that’s running around the world, make sure countries can account for their inventories.  Look, we had a non-governmental organization, a Pakistani non-governmental organization—people who used to work on the Pakistani nuclear program—meet with bin Laden, share crude weapons designs.  The head of that organization looked at bin Laden and said, 'You know, the hard part about this is getting the fissile material.'  And bin Laden looked at him and said, 'What if I already have it?'

We know, in 2003, that they thought they might be able to buy Russian weapons to use against the Saudis.  Saudis went crazy, we went nuts—everybody got in this.

MATTHEWS:  So right now, over at Langley, your successors are worrying about what you’re talking about, right now.

TENET:  I absolutely believe that they are.  And it’s not just about the intelligence.  You’ve got to bring our labs, our scientists, our engineers, our policies—all have to be synchronized.  Look, we have to guard against the conventional attacks.

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