Post-9/11 Security Threats Discussion

Uh, chase down those who would do us harm

and bring them to justice.

And, uh,

and that was the whole planning, uh, that you led with the

Pentagon.

Uh,

but at the time, we weren't on the offensive,

and therefore, the only

thing you could do is just hope that the intelligence was wrong.

And but there were a lot of threats, a lot.

I remember the anthrax attacks hit, and th- that scared a lot of

people. There was a Malaysian plot.

There was all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, there was a smallpox threat.

Yeah, smallpox, right.

And, um, uh, that's one that I will never forget because, uh,

you had

the CDC to come in. We had not vaccinated against smallpox

since the

1950s.

And the, the, the director of CDC, uh, Judy, uh, Julie

Gerberding-

That's right

... said to the president, uh, "If you try to vaccinate the whole

country,

uh, 5% of the population will have an adverse

reaction."

And you said, "What is an adverse reaction?" She said,

"They'll die."

Mm-hmm.

I'm saying this because I think you don't understand, people now don't understand

the heaviness of the days after 9/11-

Right

... in trying to protect the country.

But you wanna tell them about the botulinum toxin?

Yeah, I mean, y- you tell it, but, uh, no.

There was all kinds of stuff going on, you know?

Uh.

And of course, we were, y- you know, a lot of it was new,

so we were, uh,

we were... And if you look back, you say we overreacted.

But at the time, I don't think we overreacted.

We were very c- very wise about how we dealt with these

threats that were

coming in.

Yeah.