Q: Can I ask about missile defence since we have this test coming up and there's been a lot of, a lot of the critics of missile defence have been whining about this idea of building a test facility in Alaska, and they've been complaining that it's just a back door way to start deploying missile defences and breaking the ABM Treaty before you even have any results that show that this capability really can work.

Do you have a secret plan to put an operational system in Alaska? Can you just tell us what the story is there?

Rumsfeld: I know it's hard to believe but I don't have a secret plan for anything. I just don't.

The fact is that I was engaged in a discussion with Carl Levin and it turned out that General Kadish had briefed him on something before he briefed me on the same thing.

Q: I remember him asking about that at the hearing.

Rumsfeld: It didn't bother me a bit. There's so much going on in this place, it's so big, and there are so many decisions being made, and there are so many people engaged in useful work that that's inevitable. But I think since that hearing I have had a briefing from General Kadish and am up to speed, pretty much up to speed. We've not quite come to closure on all of it, but the short answer is no. I am A, fully aware that it would be foolish to try to have a secret plan to do anything, even if I were smart enough to want to have a secret plan.

We've got this process in the hands of people who are smart, who know how to do it, who are working the problem. And with respect to the treaty, as I said to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, my attitude about it is that we don't have any desire at all to be clever or to stretch the meaning of the treaty or something like that.

Why would we want to be accused by -- even if it's one lawyer out of four -- of doing something that is amiss? That isn't the way this institution ought to function. We ought not to be accused of doing things that are not legal or...

Q: Maybe I haven't asked this very artfully. Let me get specific.

Are you in fact going to build a test facility in Alaska? And is it possible that then could become an actual deployed missile defence site as you spoke about when you were in Europe, about deploying technology as soon as it's available and not necessarily waiting until the end of the process?

Rumsfeld: Can I have a piece of paper? Let me... I know this isn't handy for sound bytes, but let me take a piece at a time.

There's a question of deploying. We have no plans at the present time to deploy in the meaning of the word. There was a plan to deploy a site, as I understand it... I shouldn't even say that.

The prior administration had plans to put interceptors and a new radar in Alaska. And I believe they characterized that as a deployment, although I don't know.

Q: They decided not to do that.

Rumsfeld: Okay.

And the stage we are in is not in deploying anything. It is in doing research, development and testing.

To do that, the first thing you have to do is give notice to Congress that in 30 days you might let a contract. That's kind of an early signal of something happening.

The next thing you do is you let a contract, and then there's time that passes.

The next thing that happens is you may take down some trees, burned trees I understand are up there, to clear a site.

The next thing one might do is to begin to put an interceptor in a hole, or prepare the ground for upgrading the, I guess it's called the Cobra Dane radar that's up there, or begin preparing a site to deploy, not to deploy, to put up a different radar, which is what the prior administration proposed.

Now there are lawyers who would say that if you, not if you notify you're going to let a contract, and not if you let a contract, but if you in the few weeks that you can do anything up there, if you clear the trees that's not a problem, most lawyers would say -- I think all.

When you do something other than clear the trees, that is to say you put in a rail for a radar, a new radar, someone could make the case that that is the beginning of deployment.

Now if it is a test as opposed to a prototype or a useable, something that could conceivably, ultimately be used as a radar in a missile defence system, someone could say that that is outside the treaty.

Now our intention is to not go outside the treaty. We've been working on some testimony that Paul Wolfowitz is going to be delivering tomorrow, I think, and it's very good. It goes into all of this. It has a series of Q&As, I guess not Q&As, they're things like that. It says what about the idea of deploying as quickly as possible or something, what does this mean? We tried to get a lot of those things up, and it's going to be I think very good testimony.

Go to the question of deploy as quickly as possible. Clearly the president has said he intends to have missile defence and he would like to deploy when it was ready to deploy. He's not rushing to deploy something that's not ready to deploy.

The issue has been raised, well, would you deploy something that didn't work? Of course the answer is nothing works perfectly. And we don't have a single weapon system that works 100 percent of the time. The difference in lives saved if you get a reasonably high percentage of success in the event of an attack is obviously worth a lot. So the answer is, you bet. Like most cars, airplanes and weapons that we have, you would very likely come to some point that you would be willing to deploy even though it didn't do 100 percent of what one would like in a perfect world.

The other complication is, let's say you had a test site, and the question is, would you deploy it before it was ready to be deployed, quote/unquote. The answer is you might, because in Kosovo and in the Gulf War there were any number of weapon systems that were in the RDT&E stage that were seized out of that and used successfully in the conflict.

If you had a test site and if there were some incidents that gave rise to a period of tension and the risk of a ballistic missile from a hostile power, it would be unreasonable to think that you might not try at least to use something that had not reached the deployment stage, just as has been done repeatedly throughout the history of our country.

The bottom line is that the treaty is designed to not have ballistic missile defences, and the president has decided he wants to have ballistic missile defences, and we are proceeding on an R&D effort to get it to the point where we can have ballistic missile defence -- theatre and national.

Q: There's a press report just this evening out of the State Department that a memo has gone up to all U.S. embassies, sort of a talking point on missile defence. And one of the points that it makes is that the U.S. will do a non-ABM compliant test within months, not years.

Rumsfeld: That is the phraseology that everyone's always used.

Q: Months, not years?

Rumsfeld: Oh, yeah. I think that's in Paul's testimony . That's a repeat of what has always been said. That's nothing new.

We don't have anything there, and the question is how many months.

Q: Is there something there, or...

Rumsfeld: No, no. There's nothing new on that.

Q: Can I ask you to just clarify something, though. When you say it's our intention, I'm just thinking, not to go outside the treaty, but clearly a deployment of ten missiles with the stated intention that you might use them is outside the treaty as it currently exists.

So at what point in your mind is this test facility outside the treaty? Because you are going to go outside the treaty.

Rumsfeld: Well, we've always said we intend to have missile defence which means you're going to go outside the treaty. But we intend not to go outside the treaty because the president has indicated that he wants to establish some understandings with Russia that would move us beyond the treaty and not put us in violation of the treaty which he has no intention of doing.

Obviously your first choice would be to do that in a mutual way and that's why he's met with Mr. Putin, that's why he's meeting with him again this month. That's why he had me meet with Minister of Defence Ivanov and why Secretary Powell's met with his counterpart, and why we plan to have some additional meetings during the rest of this year.

Q: What point is this outside the treaty, or beyond the treaty.

Rumsfeld: We don't want to be accused of being close to being out because someone can then say you're out.

So that means what we're going to have to is obviously watch what we are doing so that we aren't violating the treaty, and proceed apace with the Russians in a manner that ends up preferably mutually agreeing to an approach that would set aside the treaty or put us beyond the treaty with some understandings as to what we're going to do and some new framework that makes sense from our standpoint and their standpoint.

Q: What reaction has the U.S. gotten so far from the Russian and the European allies about this test facility concept and putting ten missiles in the ground?

Rumsfeld: We have not put ten missiles in the ground.

Q: The concept...

Rumsfeld: Oh, the concept. That's the old concept from the previous administration except they were going to put 100 missiles in, as I recall.

Q: Yes, but they were going to make a deployment decision. I guess what I'm really trying to figure out is what reaction you've gotten from the Russians and the allies about this concept of a potential early ten-missile deployment for a test facility, but reserving the right to use these ten missiles in the event of a contingency. What are the Russians and the allies telling you about? What are their thoughts, their reactions back to you on this?

Rumsfeld: I don't think that anyone's focused on that particular little bitty piece of it all.

In the first place, if you think about it, the relationship between the United States and Russia is political, it's economic, it's secure. It is a piece of the security, but in the total context of the relationship which is what is going to be under discussion. You see, it's the whole relationship, not missile defence or ABM Treaty.

I don't think anyone's got any lack of clarity as to, in terms of Europe or Russia, as to what we've got in mind. We've got in mind having missile defence. We're not at the point of deploying, and we are at a point of trying to sort through with Russia a framework that will enable us to do that in a way that is perfectly consistent with our relationship.

Q: How far can you go with this test facility plan before you have to have an understanding with the Russians about it? How far can you go? Can you put a missile in the ground?

Rumsfeld: I don't know. I think you probably could if you wanted to characterize it as a test facility, which it would be. And I think most lawyers would agree with that. But as I say, our goal is not to get into that. We're not going to get into a lawyer's debate over if you might use it, might it not? Might more of the lawyers go to the other side if you think you might use it in a crisis that doesn't exist hypothetically? I mean that's just chasing your tail.

We want to sit down with the Russians and sort through this in a way that's rational and professional, and we don't intend to violate the treaty. And when I say that, I suspect I'm right. I don't think you'll find we have, will or even might. I think that this person does not like to go right up to the edge of the line and allow people to point a finger at you and say gee, look what you've done.

Q: But if you've reached... For some reason despite all the good faith diplomatic efforts you reach no understanding with the Russians, there will come a point where you... You could withdraw from it.

Rumsfeld: You could withdraw from the treaty. So they know that, we know that, but our hope is that we'll find a way to make sure...

 (...)

Q: You'd withdraw but not break, that's what you're saying.

Rumsfeld: The president said he wants to have ballistic missile defence. The treaty prohibits ballistic missile defence.

Q: If you can't reach an agreement with the Russians you'll withdraw.

Rumsfeld: We'd have to. We have no other choice.

Q: I don't understand the difference between that and breaking the treaty.

Rumsfeld: Oh, I see your point. Maybe it's my language that's imperfect.

Q: You're going to get out of the treaty, no matter what.

Rumsfeld: No.

(Multiple voices)

Rumsfeld: ...six months notice and you can do that.

Q: I understand, but the effect is the same.

Rumsfeld: No, I don't think so at all. I think it's not good for the United States to be accused of breaking a treaty, of violating a treaty, of doing something that is inconsistent with the provisions that you signed and the Senate ratified. I don't think they're the same at all.

Q: Okay.

Rumsfeld: Now we have no intention of doing either one, to be perfectly honest. We have every intention of working out an arrangement with the Russians, and I think we will.

Q: What are you prepared to offer the Russians to reach this mutually agreeable path to missile defence?

Rumsfeld: I don't know that you offer people anything in a negotiation like that. We don't feel like we have to offer anything and I don't think they feel like they have to offer anything.

What we have is a situation where our two countries have a lot of things that are in common interests. The Russians, if they look around the world, see a number of economies that are doing well and a number of people that are doing well, and there are certain things that lead to people doing well, and they tend to be freer political systems and free press, and they tend to be freer economic systems. There tends to be a respect for contracts and the rule of law. And to the extent you create an environment that's hospitable to investment, investors come in. And they come in, they're not going to come in from Cuba and they're not going to come in from North Korea, they're going to come in from the West.

And to the extent Russia orients itself to the West, obviously it will benefit in so many ways from that investment and their people will do well.

This is a big country. It's a country that has been characterized in the past as a dictatorship, a communist dictatorship with lots of nuclear weapons. It is today a country that is not a communist dictatorship. It is in transition to something else. They still have a lot of nuclear weapons but they're declining, just as we intend to reduce our numbers of nuclear weapons. And they have a great history of literature. They have some of the finest mathematicians and scientists on the face of the earth. They have no reason in the world they could not be doing things that India and other countries are doing with respect to software capabilities and with the talented workforce and literate workforce that they have.

It isn't any decision the United States government's going to make. It isn't going to come from the IMF or the World Bank or the Export/Import Bank. It's going to come from, the power of private investors is enormous, and their circumstance is going to be determined by how they want to go. And it's frankly very much in their interest to go the way I've just suggested, and it's very much in our interest that they go that way.

It is a very good thing for Western Europe. It's a very good thing for the United States. And it's not a very good thing if they decide to go some other road.

We as a country have a lot that we can be helpful with if that's the way they go. There's not much we can be helpful with if they decide to go some other way. So there's political interests, we have economic interests, and they have a security interest. If they go another way it's going to cost them from a security standpoint. It's going to cost us from a security standpoint and we don't want that. We don't think of them as the enemy, we don't think of them as a conventional threat, we don't think of them as posing a nuclear threat, that they have any, aren't going to gain anything by threatening.

They are a problem from the standpoint of the numbers of things they have that if export controls don't work well and they aren't managed correctly can be damaging to the rest of the world because there's so many things they have that are attractive to other people, and if they're floating around the world we're going to end up with an awful lot more people with technologies that are threatening to the rest of the world, including us.

But I think that that framework that I've just characterized is much bigger than missile defence, and it seems to me that that is the context for our discussion. It certainly was the context for the discussion I had with Mr. Ivanov. It is certainly the discussion that President Bush and President Putin had and they announced after their meeting, and I suspect that it would be that big and that broad as we go forward.

Q: Is it your sense that the Russians have as much heartburn over ABM as critics of missile defence have?

Rumsfeld: You know, there's Russians and there's Russians. I guess it's like there's Americans and Americans.

Q: What about those Russians in charge?

Rumsfeld: Well, I think that time will tell. But my impression is that Mr. Putin, from what I've read of his meeting with President Bush and what he said, and my meetings with Mr. Ivanov, and thinking about it, I think the arguments are so compelling that they and we both benefit if we can find a way to fashion an understanding that makes sense for both of us for the future.

I think they're perfectly capable of thinking fresh and not being constrained by Cold War arrangements that were fundamentally established between two adversary states, one of which doesn't exist anymore.

Q: What about China? When they look at your Pacific-wide test range and X-band radar out in Hawaii or floating around on a ship, aren't they going to say this architecture is aimed right at us?

Rumsfeld: Well, as you know, a defensive system is not aimed at anybody. It's a defensive system. That does not mean that somebody can't say anything they want to say.

There's certainly no Russian who's knowledgeable at all who could suggest that what we're proposing to try to do is any threat to a country with thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons, and they know that.

China's got a different circumstance. China has many fewer. They are adding to them, and they are adding to them quite apart from missile defence. They're doing it because they decided that's what they want to do, and China's China. China's going to do what it wants to do, and it's increasing its defence budget in double digits, has for a number of years. It's working on a whole host of ballistic missiles that they're deploying in waves that are threatening to Taiwan.

I don't think, frankly, that missile defence is going to make one bit of difference to China. They're going to be doing what they're going to be doing anyway. And the only state or entity that could contend that missile defence was threatening to them is a country that has decided that they want to try to intimidate the United States or their neighbours with ballistic missiles.

They therefore would find it disadvantageous that missile defence existed, and muted that threat. It's not threatening. Defences are not threatening to anyone.

Q: But Mr. Secretary, as you look at the broad array of issues you're working on, the radical transformation you've described, personnel, weapon system, etc., do you feel today that the billions required to research, test, develop and deploy missile defence is worth taking money away from all the other things that this department has to do every day, which most people believe is a more immediate threat to American national security.

Rumsfeld: Well I'm not in a position to have the knowledge that you've expressed in your question that most people think.

Q: Okay, just answer the question...

Rumsfeld: I got the sense. First I want to erode the premise of the question. (Laughter)

Q: Welcome to our world.

(Multiple voices)

Rumsfeld: It looks to me that if... First of all, we've had people killed by ballistic missiles. They threaten our neighbours now. They threaten our deployed forces now. They threaten our allies now. They are growing in numbers across the globe. They are growing in range across the globe, and the lethality of the warheads are growing across the globe.

In terms of the numbers of countries and the stockpiles and the, I don't know quite what the word is, but when I read about what's going on with germ warfare and the biological side of it, the advanced generations of these things and the damage they do is horrendous. And we're spending probably... If you took every conceivable kind of, the PAC-3 and Arrow and every...all across the spectrum of ballistic missile defence, we're probably spending what, two percent of the budget? Two-and-a-half at the most. Two-and-a-half.

We're spending more than that, three, three-and-a-half for terrorism. We're spending some other, we're working on...

Q: DoD, 3.5....

Rumsfeld: What's that? It's administration wide.

Q: Ten or 11, right?

Rumsfeld: We're spending on lots of things one, or two, or three, or four percent of the budget. Cruise missiles are proliferating as well, and in a very worrisome way.

And if you believe as I do that we're unlikely to be attacked on the high seas because of the power of our Navy; and if history, if the past is prologue, why we're unlikely to be surpassed in the air. We haven't had many airplanes shot down in the last period of years by the enemy. Clearly it's the asymmetric threats that are a risk, and they include terrorism, they include cruise missiles, they include ballistic missiles, they include cyber attacks. And if you added up the money we're spending on all of those combined, it is not anything that would give anyone cause to ask the question, it seems to me.

It is probably true that we are, I want to think how I say this. I suspect, I can't prove it. Off the record. [off the record response deleted].

Q: Are we back on the record?

Rumsfeld: Oh, you bet.

(...)

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