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David Pakman: Congressman Bob Ney is with us, former Congressman from Ohio's 18th Congressional
District in the House of Representatives from '95 until 2006, where he resigned. Bob, great
to talk to you again.
Bob Ney: Nice to talk to you, David. How are you?
David: I'm doing well. We're doing kind of a retrospective on the 10 years since 9/11,
and you on 9/11 were involved with security of the Capitol and you oversaw Capitol Hill
police as Head of House Administration. So where were you, first of all, on the day that...
on 9/11, how did you first hear about it, what decisions did you have to make?
Ney: Well, I was in the personnel office in the Longworth Building when the first plane
flew in. When the second one flew in, we knew it was a terrorist act. So I went up to House
Administration that oversees Capitol Hill police and security, and we immediately got
on the phone with the Sergeant of Arms.
And David, through a unique, weird twist, one of our attorneys was late from a dental
appointment, was on a cell phone coming across the bridge, and as I had the Sergeant of Arms
on my right ear, Fred Hay was on the left ear, and he started yelling a plane he believed
was going into the Pentagon. He could see the plane coming down.
So we actually communicated with the Sergeant of Arms that the plane was going into the
Pentagon before it actually went in, so the evacuation alarm was pulled, and 10,000-some
people were evacuated, the second time since 1812 the Capitol was fully evacuated.
David: And what... how many minutes are we talking from the time that you received that
phone call until the explosion at the Pentagon?
Ney: I would say about eight or nine seconds, actually, passed, and then the plane was going
into the Pentagon, we were pulling the evacuation bell for the Capitol to, you know, tell people
to leave.
And I can remember our intelligence then told us in 14 minutes, I can remember, David, specifically,
14 minutes, a plane inbound from Pennsylvania, they said, will hit the Capitol, and they
just told everybody to run.
David: And then when you... when you went... at that point, I'm guessing you were outside,
and what do you remember, what took place, where did you next go, how long are we talking
here?
Ney: I can remember the Capitol Hill police bravely standing there waving their arms saying
there's a plane inbound in 14 minutes, run. And it struck me, 10,000-some people like,
you know, coming out of an anthill were running in every direction. Of course, cars were stopped
in the street, they closed all the bridges down. But it always amazed me the brave Capitol
Hill police who stood there, stayed on the Capitol to make sure everybody got evacuated,
fully believing within 14 minutes a plane was going to slam into the Capitol from Pennsylvania.
So we just all headed in every direction. It was chaos. None of the cell phones worked.
And eventually, I had a Blackberry, which nobody knew what that was, there were 200,
David, on Capitol Hill, today there's 6000, that Blackberry later said go to an undisclosed
location, by the time I got there, Gephardt was there, who had been the Speaker before,
you know, Gingrich, Gephardt was there, Tom DeLay, maybe about 12 or 14 members of the
House and the Senate were there, because there was no way to contact people.
Now, later on everybody wanted a Blackberry, and that's how Steny Hoyer, our ranking member,
and I gave Blackberries to members of Congress. It was the only... it was the only thing that
worked in D.C. that day.
David: So when you say an undisclosed location, I mean, can we assume that it was a place
within walking distance? You didn't get into a car, I'm guessing.
Ney: Well, I was already all the way down on the water, and by the time the message
got to me... and it was sort of word of mouth, we called it Congress by street corner, members
of Congress were standing on street corners. Later they got very angry that, you know,
they couldn't be located and they weren't in touch with anything, so that's why we utilized
the Blackberries.
But it was within walking distance. It's known what it is now, it was the Capitol Hill police
building, which is... well, there's a restaurant down there called The Monocle, everybody knows
The Monocle, and it's down, I'd say about two blocks from Capitol Hill, and that's where
everybody just started meeting. Finally I think about 170, 200-some members got the
word and showed up there.
David: Did you... for the rest of the day, we heard, you know, *** Cheney and George
W. Bush were kept separated, for a while, George W. Bush, well, first he was in Florida,
then he stayed on Air Force One for some time, what was the rest of that day for you like?
Ney: We stayed at the Capitol Hill police headquarters for a while. Steny Hoyer, who
is now the number two, you know, Democrat in the country, he's one of the leaders of
the House on the minority side, was the ranking member of our committee. Steny and I talked
to the members of Congress because they were trying to speculate what happened, and we
wanted basically, before they would go out in the media and say Congress is not functioning,
we're not members of Congress, because that was the attitude by some of them, not all
of them, but well, we want to be able to do something, we want to go back and vote, but
there was no way we could reopen that Capitol. David, we didn't know what was next, what
was going to be bombed next, we didn't have any intel.
So finally, Steny talked to the group I did, and everybody agreed, go to the steps of the
Capitol as just a sign, sing "God Bless America", but don't try to go back in and have a session.
That was not a smart thing to do. So cooler heads prevailed.
David: What decisions did you have to make as far as security went that day? Were there...
an interesting... I think an interesting question also might be what did you decide not to do
that could've maybe changed the course of that day?
Ney: That's actually the jackpot question, because that day, we didn't do anything, we
relied on the Capitol Hill police, but the immediate day after, Steny Hoyer, again, the
ranking member, I was Chairman of House Administration, the principals, somebody from Representative
Gephardt's office, the Minority Leader, somebody from, you know, Representative... or, Speaker
Hastert's office, the people that ran the House for us, we all got together and formed
this kitchen cabinet group.
And we would put down, log in immediate, urgent decisions, decisions, important decisions,
and long-term planning, because people were coming up with ideas, hundreds of them: shut
down the Capitol, put a wall around it, you know, you name it, the ideas came forth, both
absurd, but also good ideas from members. So we formed this group. But after that, for
six solid months, it was decision after decision to change the face of the Capitol.
But I've gotta tell you, Steny Hoyer was an absolute unbelievable gentleman. It was the
institution first. Steny Hoyer didn't play politics on one single item. He could've rightfully
so questioned doing this or doing that; he formed a partnership for what was good for
the institution. I will never forget how Steny Hoyer put politics completely down low and
he just did what was good for the institution and we worked together.
I would say we made probably over 150 to 200-some major decisions on upgrading the Capitol,
Blackberries, security in offices, how to communicate, you name it, we had to do it.
And on the heels of that, of course, came an anthrax attack later, which we had to,
again, re-evacuate the Capitol.
David: So that night, was there a decision about, do we have to stay here, does everybody
go home? What happens that first night?
Ney: Well, there were some members the first night that were very, very upset. They felt,
and I'm not questioning, you know, whether they were right or wrong, but they felt they
needed to be physically in the Capitol, we needed to have a session, it needed to be
on C-SPAN, the country needed to know that we were there, that was the feeling.
Steny Hoyer and I and our leaders, Speaker Hastert and Mr. Gephardt, both felt that,
you know, the best thing to do is let this be in the hands, at least for the next couple
of days, of the Capitol Hill police. Don't open up a floor session. We didn't know what
was next. The country would understand that, you know, there was nothing at that particular
time we could do by having a session of Congress. What are you going to vote on?
So cooler heads kind of prevailed, and most of the members went along with, give it a
couple days, let's do this the right way.
And the theory and the theme was this amongst Congressman Hoyer, myself, and the principals
involved in this, the leaders: we want safety and security, but we want that building open.
Because there was a lot of talk about shutting down tours and shutting down this and shutting
down streets, so we needed to balance it, and that's what I think happened. I think
it's a better Capitol today for that.
David: You've moved away, at least in the conversations you and I have had over the
last few years, from what started out as the kind of traditional neoconservative point
of view on Iraq. Do you believe, now that we've had just a few days less than 10 years
of time since 9/11, that 9/11 was unjustly used as justification for going into Iraq,
invasions of privacy, the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping? What's your view on that now
that certainly your position has shifted or evolved over some time, but also with 10 years
now of space?
Ney: Well, I'll tell you, it's something that, and I was asked this question last week, it's
something that makes me more uncomfortable than the crimes I committed, and the fact
that I did prison time with the Abramoff affair. That in itself is a thing you remember and
you don't want to do, you know, further wrong off of it.
But number one above that in my mind is the fact that in that administration, someone
lied and people died. And if we'd have known the... at least if I had known the truth,
I would not have given the president full force and authority.
They've never corrected that. Nobody's dug into how a few people could've lied to an
entire Congress and a nation. So we still, you know, the fact remains, Saddam was a bad
guy, so were the former rulers in the Sudan. I can give you a thousand bad people, but
the fact remains that someone lied and we invaded a country for weapons of mass destruction
that simply don't exist.
David: We're going to be speaking with retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski,
who has written extensively about the misinformation campaign that circled around Iraq and 9/11.
She has written extensively that it was very deliberate and that there was kind of already
a foregone conclusion about Iraq even before 9/11. Are you privy to or can you speak to
discussions about going into Iraq that predate 9/11?
Ney: Actually not. I mean, there was always a disgruntled attitude with Saddam Hussein,
but I believe that 9/11 occurring is what gave especially *** Cheney the ability to
I think convince the president, along with I think a terrible man named Ahmed Chalabi,
who fed us false information.
He wanted to be, you know, the new thug, I call it, in Iraq. And I think Chalabi fed
us a whole line with his whole group in exile. And again, I don't say Saddam Hussein was
a good guy by any stretch of the imagination, he was a maniac, but I think they utilized
9/11.
Prior to that, I was not brought personally as a member any significant evidence of, you
know, weapons that existed there. There were rumors and hearsay, but at the appropriate
time, they brought us... you know, I can't say what I exactly saw, but they brought us
the video, the satellites, etc., etc., of different items that fully convinced me we'd
better give the president full authority.
I think 9/11 was utilized. As people say in politics, don't let a good emergency go to
waste, and that's what I think they did.
David: You mentioned *** Cheney convincing President Bush to go into Iraq. So you believe
that that was more... that *** Cheney was more a catalyst for the action that eventually
took place than Bush was?
Ney: Well, I firmly believe that. I think Cheney always pushed. His daughter was the
head of the Iran desk at the State Department, a lot of people don't realize that, so she
had her fingers in different Middle East affairs, and I believe that *** Cheney and the Neocons,
even to this day, feel slighted because they didn't get to go all the way into Iran and
bomb the heck out of it either.
And again, I'm not saying Ahmadinejad is... he's a dictator. Saddam Hussein's a dictator.
But Cheney had a game plan, and I firmly believe in my mind, and from conversations with friends
over the years, that, you know, Bush might've done it, but Cheney was surely there being
the cheerleader. No doubt in my mind.
David: You've certainly spoken much more freely about your thoughts, and you haven't been
hesitant to say that they have changed over the years. Do you think that there are current
Republican, or, and Democrat members of Congress that maybe have a similar sense, a similar
inkling as what you have about the issue of Iraq, 9/11, but they simply can't really say
it with the clarity you say it because, I don't know, political pressure, they're still
in office? Or do you think that you're an exception in terms of your expanded view on
this?
Ney: Well, Walter Jones, you know, who originated the freedom fries idea, but Walter Jones is
one who has just definitely out-front said look, this was the wrong decision, and I was
wrong in my vote, based on, you know, what we all heard. So there are men and women that
have come out front-and-center, but there's a lot of people that still say well, you know,
Saddam was a bad guy. Well, I'm not real happy with what they do as rulers of China, but
I don't think we go and invade them.
So in my case, I'm out from under the thumb of the government, they can't drag me back
to Morgantown, West Virginia, so I maybe have a little bit more ability to speak out, and
I'm also not in Congress anymore, but a lot of this came really afterwards, you know,
when the whole mess cleared and we really found out that they lied to us.
But there's a few people I think that have come out and said look, this was... this was
bad, bad call, and if I had to do it again, with what I know, I would do it different.
And I still think there are some that couch it with well, you know, the guy was a bad
guy. After all, at the end of the day, we had to get him.
David: You know, you've said twice now "lie", that we were lied to. And there's a lot of...
a lot of Republicans would say that that's not really true. There was faulty intelligence,
but no lies were told. How would you respond?
Ney: Oh, it was a lie. And, you know, look, I falsified a document on the cost of the
trip; I lied. Now, we can couch it any way we want, my staff gave me the wrong information,
at the end of the day, I signed it, so I am... I am perpetrating the lie.
With the administration, it's the same thing. Faulty intelligence, I could see if faulty
intelligence said there's 100,000 weapons of mass destruction, there were only 30,000,
that's faulty intelligence, but when you say there's weapons of mass destruction and there
are zero, that's a lie. Someone down the food chain, whether it was Chalabi or the RCIA
or whatever, they lied. That's not even an error.
And you know what, David? Either party, nobody dare has the guts to get down to the bottom
of it. Drag those people back in that talked to us in that room that day, to the members
of Congress, ask them, where did you get the information?
And if they don't want to reveal it in the interest of national security to all of us,
at least somebody ought to sit down and find out, hey, you three or four people, you talked
to members of Congress, you told them the following seven things, where'd you get that
from?
David: Former Congressman Bob Ney, Ohio's 18th Congressional District. Really a pleasure
to speak with you.
Ney: Thanks.
David: A lot of interesting stuff here, and I'm sure there will be more of it coming up.
Ney: Thank you, David.
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