:00:05. > :00:09.the highest in three years. Now it is time for HARDtalk.
:00:09. > :00:13.Michael Chertoff was the man whose task it was to keep the USA safe.
:00:13. > :00:16.For four years he was the director of homeland security under George W
:00:16. > :00:19.Bush and a leading figure in America's war on terror. Michael
:00:19. > :00:22.Chertoff says that ten years after the September 11 attacks the world
:00:22. > :00:32.remains threatened by terrorist groups. So what have we learned
:00:32. > :00:40.
:00:40. > :00:48.over the last decade about how best to combat this ongoing threat?
:00:48. > :00:58.Michael Chertoff, welcome to HARDtalk.
:00:58. > :01:06.
:01:06. > :01:13.Thank you. Do you still think that it is a war
:01:13. > :01:18.on terror? I think it is, but it is an unusual war. It needs both
:01:18. > :01:21.traditional military action and also law enforcement. It runs the
:01:21. > :01:26.spectrum. I think that is the way national security will be from now
:01:26. > :01:33.on. It will be a spectrum. Do you understand why some of your Peers
:01:33. > :01:41.have said that the use of the word war is actually counter-productive?
:01:41. > :01:45.-- some of your peers. It was Osama Bin Laden who began by declaring a
:01:45. > :01:52.war. He began by declaring it. If you look at the destruction that
:01:52. > :01:58.was visited on the United States on 9/11, certainly the scale in terms
:01:58. > :02:02.of loss of life eclipses any other in American history. He used the
:02:02. > :02:08.tools of war. We saw Osama Bin Laden killed earlier this year.
:02:08. > :02:13.That is the kind of thing you do in a war, not in a criminal case.
:02:13. > :02:22.danger, I guess, is you are being sucked into the territory on which
:02:22. > :02:25.your enemy, Osama Bin Laden, wants to take you. The boss of MI5,
:02:25. > :02:34.Britain's secret intelligence service, said that she felt the
:02:34. > :02:40.9/11 attacks were a crime, not an act of war.... She says the attacks
:02:40. > :02:45.were monstrous, but they were just a crime, not qualitatively
:02:45. > :02:49.different to what had gone on before. I have to disagree with
:02:49. > :02:53.that. If that were correct, it would be the case that we should
:02:53. > :02:57.not have killed Osama Bin Laden, we should have served a subpoena on
:02:57. > :03:04.him or indicted him and tried to have him extradited from Pakistan.
:03:04. > :03:08.What were the chances that would have happened.... our success is
:03:09. > :03:13.the ability to combine military tools and traditional investigative
:03:13. > :03:18.tools as one total effort. I think that still remains, practically,
:03:18. > :03:23.the most effective approach to striking back. Is it a war that can
:03:23. > :03:31.be resolved militarily? Identikit can be resolved militarily. I think
:03:31. > :03:34.in the short-term, these tools keep a safer -- I don't think it can. It
:03:34. > :03:39.is reminiscent of the Cold War, when you are fighting with a set of
:03:39. > :03:42.ideas. How we win that in the long run involves not just government
:03:42. > :03:49.action but engaging the communities that are of the recruiting grounds
:03:49. > :03:53.for terrorists and getting them to turn against Al-Qaeda. If you are
:03:53. > :03:57.making comparisons - others have been made. For example, what
:03:57. > :04:01.happened in Northern Ireland. There it was a terrorist campaign as far
:04:01. > :04:06.as many people were concerned. Essentially it was something that
:04:06. > :04:11.was resolved politically in the end. It was done by finding extremists
:04:11. > :04:15.with whom one could talk. Do you think that is the approach you
:04:15. > :04:21.could be taking with Al-Qaeda? Eventually those who you can talk
:04:21. > :04:26.to should be negotiated with? Recalled a resolution in Northern
:04:26. > :04:29.Ireland - it resulted from the fact that I R eight had demands that
:04:29. > :04:33.were, whether you agree with them or not, at least within the realm
:04:33. > :04:36.of reason. They wanted to have a certain political status for
:04:36. > :04:42.Ireland. It is possible to come up with a compromise, whether it was
:04:42. > :04:46.up double or not I can't tell you. As I understand, Al-Qaeda has no
:04:47. > :04:50.compromise. They want not only to drive America and the West out of
:04:50. > :04:54.the Middle East, they don't like the cartoons that a published in
:04:54. > :05:00.newspapers in Denmark. They don't like certain television programmes.
:05:00. > :05:05.They don't like the way we run our plights in our own countries. It is
:05:05. > :05:10.hard to seek common ground. What needs to happen is to demonstrate
:05:10. > :05:13.to the audience out there, the potential recruits, that in the end
:05:13. > :05:17.Al-Qaeda is not a path that leads to anything productive. Hopefully
:05:17. > :05:21.there will be other alternatives, including the Arab Spring, which
:05:21. > :05:28.may be a very hopeful alternative narrative for the Arab world and
:05:28. > :05:33.the Middle East. While you are negating the ideology you say Al-
:05:33. > :05:37.Qaeda holds, isn't there a danger that while in prosecuting this war
:05:37. > :05:45.you could compromise the values which you claim to espouse so
:05:45. > :05:54.dearly? A former senior official from the sea I ate and F B I said
:05:54. > :05:58.recently that security does not Trump freedom -- CIA. The risks we
:05:58. > :06:02.face is if we have another event of that magnitude that we will over-
:06:02. > :06:06.react and give Al-Qaeda an excuse to say "we are still there, we can
:06:06. > :06:10.still galvanise the attention of the Americans". That seems
:06:10. > :06:15.precisely what you are suggesting we do. I am not suggesting we ever
:06:15. > :06:21.over-react. I am suggesting that if the measures we put in place now,
:06:21. > :06:24.first of all, reduce the risk, and second - hopefully they build some
:06:24. > :06:29.resilience. If there was a successful attack our response
:06:29. > :06:33.would be appropriate. Not excessive. Part of what we have tried to do in
:06:33. > :06:38.the last ten years is to build an architecture for our security that
:06:38. > :06:43.can be sustained over a long period. I agree - we do not want to over-
:06:43. > :06:50.react. We also don't want to under- react. Binding apposition of
:06:50. > :07:00.balance has been a task of the last ten years. -- building a position
:07:00. > :07:01.
:07:01. > :07:11.of balance.... Rendition was not actually in the domain of my
:07:11. > :07:14.
:07:14. > :07:19.department. I am an observer. Rendition began under the Clinton
:07:19. > :07:25.administration. The key issue is - how do you gather intelligence and
:07:25. > :07:32.how do you help people who are dangerous to the United States?
:07:32. > :07:38.Sometimes that involves a more compelling way of gathering that
:07:38. > :07:42.intelligence - moving people to a country where than they may have
:07:42. > :07:45.more success... Because they might be torturing... Not because they
:07:45. > :07:50.are torturing - because their knowledge of the culture, the
:07:50. > :07:53.individual - because they will not be necessarily getting Miranda
:07:53. > :07:59.rights and Court room oils when they first appear means there is a
:07:59. > :08:08.bit more ability to extract information from people. --
:08:08. > :08:12.corporate lawyers. You're putting a very softly. We are talking about a
:08:12. > :08:19.co-operation between the sea I ate and Libyan police. Files had just
:08:19. > :08:24.come out from Tripoli -- CIA. They showed that there CIA was co-
:08:24. > :08:27.operating with the Libyan police on the rendition of certain suspects.
:08:27. > :08:36.I haven't seen the documents. I am not quite sure what extremely
:08:36. > :08:41.closely means. They were very chummy. First-name terms, people
:08:41. > :08:46.who were seen as high-value subjects. There is no question...
:08:46. > :08:48.It you have a high value subject, someone with a great deal of
:08:48. > :08:58.information - core operating with another intelligence agency to get
:08:58. > :09:05.what they have -- co-operating. This is something you want to do.
:09:05. > :09:09.This was the Libyan secret police. The CIA must have known... People
:09:09. > :09:13.were going to be tortured. I am not sure I'm going to agree with you
:09:13. > :09:23.that they knew people would be tortured. My understanding of the
:09:23. > :09:28.law is that generally what the CIA would do is a... I can't tell you
:09:28. > :09:33.if people were mistreated. All the anecdotal evidence and more than
:09:33. > :09:37.anecdotal evidence, generally, shows that torture in these
:09:37. > :09:41.countries is widespread. Again, you are referring to evidence I haven't
:09:41. > :09:45.seen. Let me put it in perspective this way. In the US government and
:09:45. > :09:52.the British Government deal with unpalatable regimes? I have no
:09:52. > :09:56.doubt about it. In World War 2 we made inroads with Stalin, possibly
:09:56. > :09:59.one of the was monsters in the world. Churchill said that if the
:09:59. > :10:03.devil himself agreed to fight Hitler I would make favourable
:10:03. > :10:08.reference to him in the House of Commons. It would be lovely if
:10:08. > :10:12.people you dealt with were all up spending priests and ministers, but
:10:12. > :10:18.those people don't get intelligence. Sometimes you're working with
:10:18. > :10:22.people who are on the difficult side of the spectrum. You need to
:10:22. > :10:26.balance. There are some things you will not countenance, but there are
:10:26. > :10:31.some things you will. Would you countenance water boarding? We can
:10:31. > :10:35.have debates about water boarding... It is a specific question. I am not
:10:35. > :10:39.in a position to judge whether it is effective or not. I cannot tell
:10:39. > :10:41.you if it is the only way to get information... It is not the
:10:41. > :10:46.question whether it is effective, it is the question whether it is
:10:46. > :10:48.morally justifiable. Let me break it into two pieces. There are
:10:49. > :10:53.people and have been through the process as part of its stake
:10:53. > :10:55.training in the military who will tell you that while it is harsh and
:10:55. > :10:59.difficult it leaves no lasting effects and does not rise to the
:10:59. > :11:04.level of torture. The United Nations says it is torture.
:11:04. > :11:07.have people on both sides. On the moral issue I would say this - if
:11:07. > :11:12.you have a genuine belief that a person is in possession of
:11:12. > :11:16.information that can save lives and if you don't use anything up to the
:11:16. > :11:21.limit of the law that you can to get that information an as a result
:11:21. > :11:24.people died - are you prepared to look into the eyes of the surviving
:11:24. > :11:28.family members and say "I could have saved your son or daughter,
:11:28. > :11:34.but I didn't want to do something unpleasant, therefore, I am sorry
:11:34. > :11:40.for your loss". So the moral judgement kasbah is in a consent is
:11:40. > :11:45.- yes. Up to the limit of the law. Even if some people think it is
:11:45. > :11:48.torture. There are some people who think plea-bargaining is torture
:11:48. > :11:53.and we plea-bargain in the United States. There is a legal limit. You
:11:53. > :11:56.don't want to go beyond that. Within that, if you have to use
:11:56. > :12:04.some tough methods it may be morally justified to save innocent
:12:04. > :12:08.lives. What about Guantanamo Bay, is that justified? And there is an
:12:08. > :12:11.elaborate legal regime that allows detainees to challenge their
:12:11. > :12:16.confinement in federal court. The physical facility - I have never
:12:16. > :12:19.seen it. As it has been described to me it is probably nicer than
:12:19. > :12:25.most federal prisons. From that standpoint I don't think there is a
:12:25. > :12:29.complete any longer.... There isn't a complete any longer? I don't
:12:29. > :12:36.think there is a sound basis for complaint. An awful lot of people,
:12:36. > :12:46.including the former British Attorney General, one of your close
:12:46. > :12:46.
:12:46. > :12:50.allies, does not agree with you at all.... Guantanamo Bay has been a
:12:50. > :12:55.recruiting ground for terrorism. is not clear to me that one ton and
:12:55. > :13:00.obey has recruited terrorists or that it has been described as that
:13:00. > :13:04.-- Guantanamo Bay. Look at what causes people to carry out
:13:04. > :13:09.terrorist attacks. There have been multiple attacks in Denmark. What
:13:09. > :13:14.did they do to deserve this? They had cartoons posted in a newspaper.
:13:14. > :13:18.The idea that when we used tough measures it is recruiting - that is
:13:19. > :13:23.not supported by facts. Let's move on to your involvement in the war
:13:23. > :13:30.on terror, as you have described it. You have left government and you a
:13:30. > :13:35.part of the private sector. You have been involved in representing,
:13:35. > :13:40.working for a company which has represented the body scanner
:13:40. > :13:50.manufacturers that are being used at airports. As a part of airline
:13:50. > :13:56.
:13:56. > :14:00.Just after the failed underwear bombing. In the United States, the
:14:00. > :14:06.Accounting Office said it remained unclear whether it be advanced
:14:06. > :14:09.imaging technology would have detected the weapon used in the
:14:09. > :14:19.December 2009 incident. Do you now think what you had to say about it
:14:19. > :14:24.was overstated? No. Sometimes they get it wrong. We looked at the
:14:24. > :14:29.issue in 2006, 2007 when we first confronted the possibility of
:14:29. > :14:34.people trying to conceal elements of a bomb in personal parts of
:14:35. > :14:39.people's body. The only way to find that was to look and see if there
:14:39. > :14:45.was a concealed area in an anatomically sensitive part of the
:14:45. > :14:51.body and that is scanning. It is still have used in the United
:14:51. > :14:56.States and the algorithms have improved. The only way to discover
:14:56. > :15:04.them would be too literally Pat everybody down, which I think
:15:04. > :15:14.people would find more unpalatable. A bipartisan think tank came up
:15:14. > :15:14.
:15:14. > :15:22.with a post-9/11 approach - they said that the scanners are not
:15:22. > :15:28.effective and raised privacy and health concerns that Homeland
:15:28. > :15:32.Security have not addressed. Something that is concealed on a
:15:32. > :15:37.person, not inserted in the body - there is a separate concern raised
:15:37. > :15:42.by people about the possibility of someone actually surgically
:15:42. > :15:47.inserting a bomb inside a body. I agree that body scanning would not
:15:47. > :15:53.catch that but that is a very small risk given it would be very
:15:53. > :15:56.difficult to find people happy to engage in that. It would be
:15:56. > :16:01.mystifying as to why the German government in the last week has
:16:01. > :16:07.decided the technology does not work, it has abandoned the pilot.
:16:07. > :16:17.It studied the results from 800,000 passengers getting through, I think
:16:17. > :16:19.
:16:19. > :16:23.it was ham buried in airport. -- Hamburg airport. I am relying on
:16:23. > :16:33.what the government has told me and what has been said publicly and my
:16:33. > :16:33.
:16:34. > :16:38.understanding is that it adds real value and they say works. Has -- I
:16:38. > :16:45.have no financial interest. That is disputed by a Republican
:16:45. > :16:50.congressman who said there is no evidence there is more security but
:16:50. > :16:58.the former homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, made money by
:16:58. > :17:08.hawking this. That is a false statement. We represented a company
:17:08. > :17:09.
:17:09. > :17:16.that made the scammers but -- that made the scanners. I have been
:17:16. > :17:19.completely consistent. Do not think more broadly, since leaving
:17:19. > :17:25.government you sit on the board of a company that lobbiesat lobbiest
:17:25. > :17:35.on behalf of Defence and Security firms. It is a law firm. It lobbies
:17:35. > :17:37.
:17:37. > :17:41.the government. I practise on behalf of a lawyer. You work for a
:17:41. > :17:46.company that advises government on defence issues. I am on the board
:17:46. > :17:50.of the company. Do you think it is right for you to have moved so
:17:50. > :17:59.quickly from government into private industry in this way?
:17:59. > :18:03.could have let myself be unemployed. You could have been a lawyer.
:18:04. > :18:12.Apparently you found my work as a lawyer and appealing. If you are
:18:12. > :18:17.working on specific issues related to your past job... Let us be clear.
:18:17. > :18:22.I do not lobbied the US government. I do not work on matters, specific
:18:22. > :18:26.matters that I worked on in the government. I do use my expertise
:18:27. > :18:34.in the law and security to work with companies in that field, as
:18:34. > :18:39.most people do. Frankly, it makes sense. To have people without
:18:39. > :18:45.expertise would be for it. It is about public service and a profit.
:18:45. > :18:51.I am not insinuating anything but an asking, is it not slightly
:18:51. > :18:57.unseemly to go quickly, within days from being a very senior member of
:18:57. > :19:02.the government to working in the private sector on those issues?
:19:02. > :19:12.took some time off and went about the process of opening a therm and
:19:12. > :19:15.
:19:15. > :19:20.did that about four, five months after I left. -- a firm. President
:19:20. > :19:29.Obama made sure that every executive would sign a document
:19:29. > :19:35.saying they would not work in a specific area related to regulation
:19:35. > :19:43.and contract. That is the principle I am here to. But you are working
:19:43. > :19:47.on issues pertaining to what you did before. I do not welcome
:19:47. > :19:53.particular matters with relation to specific parties that I worked for
:19:53. > :19:57.in the government. Let me take you on to Libya. You wrote in the
:19:57. > :20:07.Washington Post earlier this year that you seem to very doubtful as
:20:07. > :20:12.to the wisdom of getting involved in Libya. Is that an opinion he is
:20:12. > :20:18.-- in you is still hold? That is not entirely correct. I said that
:20:18. > :20:25.we need to think hard about the plan that the rebels wanted.
:20:25. > :20:34.Looking back at Iraq, winning the war and toppling Saddam Hussein was
:20:34. > :20:39.the easy part. We all want to get rid of Gaddafi but do not know how
:20:39. > :20:44.it happens after that. We will put in a plan to move on to a better
:20:44. > :20:53.outcome for the people. You would now concede that the post-war
:20:53. > :21:01.planning in Iraq was a disaster? believe it was very flawed.
:21:01. > :21:07.were part of a government... I came in 2005. They must have been
:21:07. > :21:14.discussions. I do not know if assigning blame... You must have
:21:14. > :21:19.views on where it went wrong. an over-estimation of the intrinsic
:21:19. > :21:25.capability of some of the people in Iraq who were in contact with the
:21:25. > :21:35.United States to be able to take control and run the government as
:21:35. > :21:39.an effective democratic state. There was an underestimate in
:21:39. > :21:44.requirements of society. Making sure you have institutions capable
:21:44. > :21:52.of promoting democracy. It turns out that that is a lot harder than
:21:52. > :22:00.the people went into the war anticipate. What should the US be
:22:00. > :22:05.doing to try to buttress a fledgling democracy? There has been
:22:05. > :22:09.a lot of thought about how to resist the new government. I do not
:22:09. > :22:14.think we should force ourselves on them but we should have a plan for
:22:14. > :22:18.what we might be able to offer them in terms of making the transition
:22:18. > :22:27.from a dysfunctional state into what we hope will be a free and
:22:27. > :22:36.democratic state. What if you sense that people who you think I am not
:22:36. > :22:44.for American power bec power bec powerful. What is clear is that the
:22:44. > :22:49.outcome is not certain. The war on terror is yet to finish, we have no
:22:49. > :22:57.idea where it will end and yet here is a major oil-producing state
:22:57. > :23:06.which, I suppose, could fall into the hands of Islamists. We simply
:23:06. > :23:10.do not know. Equally, you began this interview by talking about how
:23:10. > :23:15.serious the prosecution of the war on terror continues to be and how
:23:15. > :23:20.you need to wage the war on all fronts. While asserting the need
:23:20. > :23:26.for the beer to be a d to be a dnd to toand offer help to seek
:23:26. > :23:34.that help, at the same time you are saying that the war on terror means
:23:34. > :23:44.we need to tanned down the flames were of a date erupt -- wherever
:23:44. > :23:50.
:23:50. > :23:54.they your -- erupt, tamp the flames. We have to see what the new
:23:54. > :24:01.government will be like. What happens to the weapons? The other
:24:02. > :24:11.kinds of weapons which have been role... We have to see what the
:24:12. > :24:18.
:24:18. > :24:28.outcome is. You have to -- you could have Turkey in or Afghanistan.
:24:28. > :24:35.
:24:35. > :24:38.Michael Chertoff, thank you for The week has got off to a pretty
:24:38. > :24:46.torrid start in many parts of the British Isles. Wednesday, for many
:24:46. > :24:49.of us, will start to calm down. Plenty of dry weather around. The
:24:49. > :24:53.wind has not gone away but is wind has not gone away but is
:24:53. > :25:02.becoming confined to the north- eastern corner of Scotland. At the
:25:02. > :25:06.opposite end of the country, it starts off fine and dry. There will
:25:06. > :25:16.be a change for Northern Ireland and it will be welcome because it
:25:16. > :25:20.
:25:20. > :25:23.starts off miserably. So too the south-west of Scotland. An area of
:25:23. > :25:25.cloud, wind and rain across Scotland. The eastern side of the
:25:25. > :25:29.Pennines is faring pretty nicely. Further west, pretty cloudy. Across
:25:29. > :25:35.much of the south-eastern quarter, along the south coast, a lot of
:25:36. > :25:39.sunshine around. It will eventually do something for the temperatures.
:25:39. > :25:49.A little bit of cloud in the south- west may generate one or two
:25:49. > :25:50.
:25:50. > :25:53.showers. The changes - the wind will freshen up, 50-60mph. The
:25:53. > :25:59.temperatures in the south of Scotland, north of England, north
:25:59. > :26:07.of Northern Ireland will respond to the sunshine. The southern counties
:26:07. > :26:17.are in for a pretty decent day. The across the north-east of Scotland,
:26:17. > :26:18.
:26:18. > :26:24.as an area of high pressure drifts in inwest. On Thursday, the
:26:24. > :26:34.wind will calm down and it might even generate mist and fog. There
:26:34. > :26:37.
:26:37. > :26:40.will be fine weather around and the temperatures responding. Fine
:26:40. > :26:45.weather. 17, 18 degrees quite widely through southern Scotland
:26:45. > :26:49.and Northern Ireland. There is the high pressurgh pressuror Thursday.
:26:49. > :26:54.It is drifting off to the near Continent just as we're getting to