Fox News The Big Story with John Gibson May 16, 2002

JOHN GIBSON: The White House fielding questions about who knew what and when and how the information should have been handled. But the President receives a lot of data, many briefings, conflicting interpretations, as he works through the day. How tough is it for the President or any President to assess what he's told? With us now from Washington, General Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser. So, from the outlines of what you have heard that the President requested and received in August of 2001, did it – does it sound like any President would have concluded that we were about to be attacked?

BRENT SCOWCROFT: I think it does not sound that way to me. First of all, this whole process of evaluation is still an art. It's not a science. You have to evaluate the source. You have to evaluate the quality of it, the generality, the specificity. It is – it's a kind of a hunch, if you will, about what is valuable enough to go forward with, what is not, and sometimes you're right, and sometimes you're wrong.

But I think, based on what I have heard about the circumstances, this was just one in a whole bunch of stories of heightened concern based on the seizure and the trial and so on of suspected terrorists. So one would be anticipating a lot of rumors, if not facts. But I don't see anything that the President should have made a decision on.

JOHN GIBSON: General, what is a President and his national security adviser supposed to do as they're reading these briefings? Are they supposed to say, "Look, I don't care if the CIA and the FBI don't think this sets off alarm bells, I do and I want something – I want alarm bells set off about what I'm reading here on this page."

BRENT SCOWCROFT: The President certainly can do that, and my guess is it happens sometimes. But, on the other hand, if he set off alarm bells, with every report that came in that something might happen, we'd have nothing but alarm bells.

This happens day after day after day on a variety of subjects and one has to use one's judgment about whether to go forward and what action is appropriate to take. If we had taken, for example, before an attack, the kind of security in airports that we're taking now, the American public would have been absolutely outraged.

JOHN GIBSON: General, the White House is making a point – you've heard your successor in the job you held say today that the word "hijacking" in the American lexicon has two different meanings, one before 9/11, one after. Do you think she's right about that?

BRENT SCOWCROFT: Oh, I think she's absolutely right because hijacking before September 11th – there were procedures to deal with hijacking, which is you don't excite the hijackers, you don't resist, you be calm and so on because the worst that will happen is that you'll be held as hostages or they'll steal the plane or something, and it was the antithesis of what one would have had to do to stop the ones going into the Trade Tower.

Now the one that went down in Pennsylvania – the passengers, apparently, did have some information from the other ones that hit the Pentagon and the Trade Towers, and they did attack the hijackers, and the plane went down. We don't know what happened to the ones that went in the Trade Tower. But the instructions, both to people and, certainly, to the air crews, was don't excite these people.

JOHN GIBSON: General Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser. General, thanks very much for coming on today.

BRENT SCOWCROFT: Nice to be with you.