Interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer

SECRETARY RICE: Nice to be with you.

QUESTION: Let's start off with this new book at the center of a storm, My Years at the CIA, by George Tenet. Some very serious charges he's making in this book. "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the Administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," he writes, "nor was there ever a significant discussion regarding enhanced containment or the costs and benefits of such an approach versus full-out planning for overt and covert regime change."

Is he right? The former Secretary -- the former CIA Director when he says there was never a serious debate in the Bush Administration about the imminence of an Iraqi threat?

SECRETARY RICE: There was certainly a discussion in the Administration with the President, with George, who saw the President, by the way, almost every day, in the Oval Office, about what the intelligence was saying about whether the Iraqi threat was getting worse, whether it was -- you could act earlier or later given the Iraq threat. But let's remember that when the President first came to office, at one of his first press conferences he said the problem is that the sanctions had become Swiss cheese, and he then set us on a course to try to strengthen those sanctions. We went to an extended period of time of trying to get smart sanctions. We went to countries -- including, for instance, the Syrians -- and said cut off the illegal oil flows because we knew the Oil-for-Food program was being used in ways that were not appropriate. Don Rumsfeld tried to make more robust the no-fly zones that we were flying against the Iraqi air force.

Then the President, in September of 2002, went to the United Nations Security Council, got another resolution that then put new demands on Iraq to comply. So this was a long period of time.

QUESTION: But as you know, there were a lot of experts at the time, including the outgoing Clinton Administration officials, the former Defense Secretary William Cohen among others, in briefing in the incoming administration who argue that Saddam was contained, he was in a box, the no-fly zones were working and he really didn't represent much of a threat externally, certainly represented a threat to his own people.

SECRETARY RICE: But we certainly know now that the sanctions weren't working, that in fact Saddam Hussein was making a mockery of the Oil-for-Food program. We certainly know that now from the multiple investigations of the Oil-for-Food program.

But this was a period of more than a year and a half of trying to find other ways to deal with the threat of Saddam Hussein.

QUESTION: But did that represent an imminent threat, the fact that he was violating the Oil-for-Food?

SECRETARY RICE: The question with imminence is, are you in a situation whether you're better to act now or are you going to be in a worse situation later. That's the question that you have to ask in policy. And the intelligence assessments which were talking about the reconstitution of his chemical and biological weapons programs and his attempts to reconstitute his nuclear programs in the context of someone against whom we had used military force in 1998, who was guilty of using weapons of mass destruction, who was shooting at our aircraft in no-fly zones, who had continued to talk about Kuwait as a province of Iraq, the President made a judgment that it was time to go after this threat.

QUESTION: Here's what George Tenet writes in this new book, At the Center of a Storm: "Those involved in (inaudible) the Bush Administration that war was inevitable. Richard Haass, the former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, has said that Condi Rice told him in July of 2002 that 'decisions were made and unless Iraq gave in to all our demands, war was a foregone conclusion.'"

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don't remember that specific conversation, but clearly when the President went to the United Nations Security Council in September and said that if Saddam Hussein does not act, then we will have to act, it meant that if he did not comply with the just demands of the international community that we would have to take action.

QUESTION: Because you remember Paul O'Neill, the first Treasury Secretary, where he wrote in his first book, The Price of Loyalty with Ron Suskind, and what Ron Suskind later wrote in his own book, The One Percent Solution, that the Bush Administration came in with a mindset to deal with what they called unfinished business with Saddam Hussein.

SECRETARY RICE: That is simply not true. The President came in looking at a variety of threats. We then had the September 11th events. The September 11th events led to a kind of reassessment of what the threats were. But in the entire period after the President became President, he was trying to put together an international coalition that could deal with Iraq, first by smart sanctions, smarter no-fly zones, then by challenging Saddam Hussein before the Security Council to meet the just demands of the Security Council, and ultimately by having to use military force. But this was an evolution of policy over a long period of time. Of course the President came in concerned about Iraq. President Clinton had used military force against Iraq in 1998. We had gone to war against Iraq in 1991. But the idea that the President had made up his mind when he came to office that he was going to go to war against Iraq is just flat wrong.

QUESTION: Here's Tenet on 60 Minutes and he's furious that that "slam dunk" comment he made, he says was distorted by you, the Vice President and others. Listen to this:

"Part of all this has just been listening to this for almost three years, listening to the Vice President go on Meet the Press on the fifth year of 9/11 and say, well, George Tenet said slam dunk, as if he needed me to say slam dunk to go to war with Iraq, as if he needed me to say that. And you listen to that and they never let it go."

All right. Do you want to respond, because this is serious charge? He's saying that he's been scapegoated, in effect, that he acknowledges he made that comment about slam dunk that the case could be a slam dunk about the weapons of mass destruction, but he says by that time you, the Administration, had already made up your mind to go to war.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, by that time we were certainly in the process of having brought Saddam Hussein before the international community and demanding that he carry through with his commitments or that there would be action. But let me go back to George on this one. I certainly don't blame George for the slam dunk comment having the sense that that was the reason we went to war. I think it's a complete misreading of how certainly I read the slam dunk comment.

QUESTION: Does he deserve an apology for --

SECRETARY RICE: No, I was asked about this and I was asked did he say slam dunk. I said yes. I said but we all thought that the intelligence case was strong. To the degree that there was an intelligence problem here, it was not just an intelligence problem with George Tenet, it was not just an intelligence problem with U.S. intelligence, it was an intelligence problem worldwide. We all thought, including UN inspectors, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. So there's no blame here of anyone. We've gone through a massive intelligence reform because there were weaknesses in the intelligence system. But I'm sorry that George feels that people were using the slam dunk comment in that way. I certainly understood that he, like all of us, thought that the intelligence was strong about Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.

QUESTION: I want to get on to some other issues, but one last question on Tenet's book because it directly involves you. Some of the initial reviews, Saturday's LA Times: Rice is portrayed as an often feckless figure in the Bush Administration, unwilling or unable to exert control over crucial foreign policy debates. The review in the New York Times: Condoleezza Rice comes across here as an ineffectual National Security Advisor, unwilling to make hard calls or mediate among warring parties.

In the book, this is what he says about you: "There was never any doubt that we would defeat the Iraqi military. What we did not have is an integrated and open process in Washington that was organized to keep the peace, nor did we have the unity of purpose and resources on the ground." "Quite simply," he says, "the NSC, the National Security Council, did not do its job."

You were the director.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: You were the National Security Advisor to the President. He says you did not do your job.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, look, not everything went right. This was a very difficult circumstance. There were some things that went right and some things that went wrong. And you know what? We'll have a chance to look at that in history and I'll have a chance to reflect on that when I have a chance to write my book.

QUESTION: And we're going to be looking forward to your book as well.

(Commercial break.)

QUESTION: Let's get on then to some other issues. The President says this week he will veto legislation passed by the House and Senate that would issue some timelines for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, full funding for the troops in Iraq. What happens after the President vetoes? Is there a compromise in the works that the White House and the Democrats and some Republicans in Congress can finesse?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, clearly the President is going to veto this because he does not want to set timelines and timetables for the withdrawal of our forces, which would send the wrong message to the Iraqis, the wrong message to the neighborhood and the wrong message to Iraq's enemies. But the President has said that after that veto he plans to have people down to the White House to find a way to move forward together. We do need to move forward together. And the benchmarks that are anticipated here, of course benchmarks that the Iraqis themselves have adopted, they are benchmarks that they need to meet. We are telling them all the time that their national reconciliation is moving too slowly; it needs to move more quickly.

But the problem is that we shouldn't tie our own hands, shouldn't tie the hands of General Petreaus, tie the hands of Ambassador Crocker, in how we use the tools that we have to get the right result in Iraq. And that's what benchmarks tied to withdrawal or benchmarks tied to withholding economic assistance would do.

QUESTION: Because there's a lot of concern right now that the Iraqis themselves aren't taking all these benchmarks, all these requirements that seriously. Supposedly, they're about to go on vacation -- the Iraqi parliament -- for two months, July and August, in the midst of their failure so far to disarm, disband the militias, deal with the oil resources, the revenue from that, deal with some other critical issues that you want them to deal with.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, certainly they need to keep working and we've made that very clear to them. I think that they will make some progress on the oil law. They've made a lot of progress on it. They need to close that and finish it. They need to get the provincial elections set up. And we're continuing to tell them that our patience isn't limitless, but neither is the patience of the Iraqi people limitless on this issue -- these reconciliation issues.

But again, it doesn't help us to help them if our hands are tied in the way that we can use our own tools to try to bring about the right effect.

QUESTION: You're heading off to Sharm el-Sheikh for a conference, a regional conference to deal with Iraq this week in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. The Iranians today announced their Foreign Minister will be there as well together with other regional leaders. Will you meet with the Iranian Foreign Minister when you're at Sharm el-Sheikh?

SECRETARY RICE: I don't rule out that we'll encounter each other. But this isn't a U.S.-Iranian issue. This isn't an opportunity to talk about U.S.-Iran issues. This is really an opportunity for all of Iraq's neighbors to talk about how to stabilize Iraq. And I look forward to this because everyone has said that they believe a stable Iraq is in their interest. Not everyone is acting as if a stable Iraq is in their interest, and I think we want to talk about how we can all take actions and Iraqi's neighbors can take actions to help the Iraqis secure themselves.

QUESTION: If you meet with the Iranian Foreign Minister, what would you say to him?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think we all know that if in fact everybody believes a secure Iraq is important, then we need to stop the flow of foreign fighters, we need to stop the help to militias that then go out and kill innocent Iraqis, we need to stop the flow of advanced IED technology, explosive device technology that's killing American soldiers. A stable Iraq is one in which its neighbors are doing the things that they need to do to help the Iraqis deal with the violent people who are trying to destabilize them, not to encourage and support those violent people.

QUESTION: Is the U.S. ready to release those five Iranians that the U.S. military is holding in Iraq right now?

SECRETARY RICE: There's a normal process for dealing with detainees and we'll deal with these detainees in that normal process. And there's a review and that review -- the outcome of that review -- will be respected.

QUESTION: When do you think we'll know --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, there will be a kind of normal timetable for this. But that issue should not be related to Iraq's neighbors doing what they need to do.

QUESTION: So you can assure us that there was no guarantee to release those five Iranians --

SECRETARY RICE: Wolf, there wasn't.

QUESTION: -- in exchange for the Iranians agreeing to come to Sharm el-Sheikh?

SECRETARY RICE: There was no guarantee. We've talked to the Iraqi Government and informed them that the detainees will be dealt with in the normal course.

QUESTION: What about the Saudis? There's confirmation now -- we spoke to Hoshyar Zebari, the Foreign Minister of Iraq, who says that Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq, wanted to visit Saudi Arabia but King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia said he didn't have time to see him.

SECRETARY RICE: Well --

QUESTION: Now, it looks like the Saudis are deeply worried that the Government in Iraq, the government of Nouri al-Maliki, is not doing enough to protect Iraqi Sunnis.

SECRETARY RICE: There's no doubt that the Saudi Government has concerns about the process of reconciliation in Iraq. They have concerns about Sunni inclusion. They have concerns about the Iraqi Government's willingness to use its security forces in an evenhanded fashion. I think that many of the things that the Iraqi Government under Prime Minister Maliki is doing addresses exactly those concerns. I made that case when I met with the Saudi Foreign Minister and others and the Gulf Cooperation Council and Egypt and Jordan. That is a point that can be made at this neighbors conference and it is a point that the Prime Minister himself can address to his neighbors to show what also needs to be demonstrated to the Iraqi people, that this government is behaving in an evenhanded fashion to make Iraq an Iraq for all Iraqis regardless of what particular sect they may come from.

QUESTION: King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia -- the Saudis are a good friend and ally of the United States -- he surprised a lot of us when he said this on March 28th: "In the beloved Iraq, the bloodshed is continuing under an illegal foreign occupation and detestable sectarianism." That's strong words against the United States from someone considered a close friend of the United States.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we're assured that His Majesty, with whom we have very good relations, knows that the United States and coalition forces are there under a UN Security Council resolution at the request of Iraqis who are not -- the Iraqi Government, which is not yet strong enough in its own security forces to protect itself and its people against the violent extremists around it. And I think that's well understood. We have a good relationship with the Saudis. I think we have the same strategic goals for Iraq. Where we have differences of tactics, we work them out. But our forces are there, and we've been assured that His Majesty understands that, because of a UN Security Council resolution.

QUESTION: But he calls the U.S. occupation there illegal, illegal foreign occupation. Did you file a protest with the Saudis?

SECRETARY RICE: We talked with several Saudis, including the Saudi Ambassador, the Saudi Foreign Minister and to others. It is very clear that the U.S. and coalition forces are there by UN mandate.

QUESTION: We're almost out of time. A quick question on Henry Waxman, who is the Chairman of the Government Oversight -- Government Reform Oversight Committee in the House. He wants to subpoena you. In fact, he has subpoenaed you to come testify about your role as the National Security Advisor and those -- the reports that the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein were trying to buy uranium in Niger, in Africa. He wants you to come forward and appear before his committee. You don't want to do that.

SECRETARY RICE: Well --

QUESTION: You've spoken about in on several occasions.

SECRETARY RICE: Right.

QUESTION: Why won't you comply with that kind of subpoena?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I have spoken about it on several occasions. I've spoken about it publicly in the press. I've spoken about it in my -- in questions for the record that Senator Levin submitted when I was confirmed as Secretary of State. I have sent to -- we've sent to Congressman Waxman hundreds of pages of documentation, including numerous letters that answered exactly the concerns and questions that he has.

QUESTION: So what's the big deal of going back and testifying?

SECRETARY RICE: I would be perfectly happy, by the way, to continue to respond in any appropriate way because I certainly understand the oversight role of Congress and I respect that role. There is a constitutional issue that the White House and we are concerned about, which is that this is in my role as a White House staff aide to the President. There is a separation of powers and the compellence of White House aides to the President, close advisors to the President to testify before Congress, is a constitutional issue.

But, Wolf, let me be very clear. It's not as if these questions haven't been answered. They were answered not just when I was confirmed, but they are also answered in a bipartisan commission report by Laurence Silberman and Chuck Robb. The Senate Select Intelligence Committee went into an exhaustive review of this issue of the Niger matter and the 16 words. We've spoken publicly about it. And I'm prepared to continue to answer further questions about it, as I've done in the several letters that I've sent to Congressman Waxman in response to his inquiries.

QUESTION: We'll leave it there with the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Thanks for coming in.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you.

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