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Pentagon Deleted Rumsfeld Comment
Remark to
Saudi About War's Certainty Is Not in Internet Transcript of Interview

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday,
April 21, 2004; Page A01

The Pentagon deleted from a public transcript a statement Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the
administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President Bush had
decided to invade Iraq.

At issue was a passage in Woodward's "Plan of Attack," an account published
this week of Bush's decision making about the war, quoting Rumsfeld as telling
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, in January 2003
that he could "take that to the bank" that the invasion would happen.

The comment came in a key moment in the run-up to the war, when Rumsfeld and
other officials were briefing Bandar on a military plan to attack and invade
Iraq, and pointing to a top-secret map that showed how the war plan would
unfold. The book reports that the meeting with Bandar was held on Jan. 11, 2003,
in Vice President Cheney's West Wing office. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended.

Pentagon officials omitted the discussion of the meeting from a transcript of
the Woodward interview that they posted on the Defense Department's Web site
Monday. Rumsfeld told reporters at a briefing yesterday that he may have used
the phrase "take that to the bank" but that no final decision had been made to
go to war.

"To my knowledge, a decision had not been taken by the president to go to war
at that meeting," Rumsfeld said. "There was certainly nothing I said that should
have suggested that, and any suggestion to the contrary would not be
accurate."

Woodward supplied his own transcript showing that Rumsfeld told him on Oct.
23, 2003: "I remember meeting with the vice president and I think Dick Myers and
I met with a foreign dignitary at one point and looked him in the eye and said
you can count on this. In other words, at some point we had had enough of a
signal from the president that we were able to look a foreign dignitary in the
eye and say you can take that to the bank this is going to happen."

The transcript made it clear that the foreign dignitary Woodward was
discussing was Bandar, although Rumsfeld would not say that. "We're going to
have to clean some of this up in the transcript," Rumsfeld said in the omitted
passage. "We'll give you a -- I mean you just said Bandar and I didn't agree
with that so we're going to have to -- I don't want to say who it is but you are
going to have to go through that and find a way to clean up my language
too."

All told, the Pentagon transcript omits a series of eight questions and
answers, some of them just a few words each. Yesterday Rumsfeld described the
deleted passages as "some banter."

Larry DiRita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said the deletion was an honest
disagreement and defense officials were reviewing the passage to determine
whether to restore it to the published version.

"I had discussions with the author about passages that would be excluded from
the transcript by mutual agreement, and this passage was one of those sections,"
he said. "It was excluded specifically because the secretary was not in a
position to validate or confirm the details that the author was raising."

Woodward said: "As the transcript shows, it was not off the record. I was
surprised that it was deleted because it obviously dealt with a critical issue
and was important corroborating information for the book. I asked DiRita to
restore it on the Pentagon Web site."

Rumsfeld's comments came on a day when fallout from the book's many
disclosures continued to dominate conversations throughout Washington. Rumsfeld,
who gave Woodward two lengthy interviews after Bush asked his Cabinet to
cooperate, was a rare dissenter in an administration that has embraced the book
despite the mixed portrayal it offers of Bush's campaign to unseat Saddam
Hussein.

Stephanie Cutter, communications director for Democratic presidential
candidate John F. Kerry, said the book "raises serious doubts about the
president's planning for war with Iraq, and what his war cabinet knew or didn't
know."

But Bush's closest aides, who typically resist efforts to pull back the Oval
Office curtains, are actively promoting sales of the book.

"We're urging people to buy the book," White House communications director
Dan Bartlett said. "What this book does is show a president who was asking the
right questions and showing prudence as well as resolve during very difficult
times. This book undermines a lot of the critics' charges."

An official involved in the negotiations said the administration cooperated
so completely that Bush asked Cheney to grant Woodward an interview, which
Cheney did, although he is not named as a source. Woodward writes in the book
that information came from "more than 75 key people directly involved in the
events," most of whom spoke on the condition that they not be identified.

The Pentagon posted transcripts of both Woodward interviews with Rumsfeld,
and they show that Rumsfeld was more recalcitrant than other administration
figures. He complained about Woodward's questions in a past meeting, saying that
"almost everything you asked me was premised with an assertion that was either
incomplete or wrong." Woodward is quoted as gently reminding Rumsfeld that the
president "wants me to do this."

At Rumsfeld's briefing yesterday, he said that he remembered the session in
Cheney's office with Bandar but that it was not unlike others "we had with any
number of neighboring countries as the buildup towards the -- to support the
diplomacy, the flow of forces was taking place.

"We had the obligation to try to do it in the most cost-effective and
responsible way, and the way that would best fit General [Tommy R.] Franks's
plans, in the event that he did in fact ultimately have to go to war," Rumsfeld
said, referring to the former head of the U.S. Central Command. "That meant we
had to talk to the countries in the region and work out things at ports or
airfields and that type of thing."

After being handed a note later in the briefing, Rumsfeld returned to the
transcript and said that it might omit "some discussion about a totally
unrelated topic, and some items that were agreed between us . . . that were off
the record."

"But I can say of certain knowledge that nothing was taken out that would
naysay what I just indicated in my response to the question," Rumsfeld said.

"No 18-minute gap?" a reporter asked, referring to the notorious deletion
from a Watergate tape.

Amid laughter, Rumsfeld said: "You can take that to the bank."

Mark Malseed contributed to this report.

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