I.O.U.S.A - Addison Wiggin [104]
Can you explain to me what happened the day you were fi red?
Paul O ’ Neill: During 2002 I found myself being at odds with where policy seemed to be going, I kept arguing that we couldn ’ t really afford another tax cut and that we didn ’ t need one, since the economy was doing fi ne. But my problems were not just differences about tax policy and social policy and fi xing Medicare and Social Security. I kept asking almost every week, of the people from the CIA who briefed me, you know, where ’ s the evidence for weapons of mass destruction? I see all of these allegations and projections of trends from 1991 and what we knew in 1991, but I didn ’ t see anything I considered to be evidence. One of the things I ’ ve been trained to do for a long period of time is to know what you know and to differentiate that from what you suspect or what someone c16.indd 211
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alleges, so I kept being a pain in the neck and asking, “ Where ’ s the evidence? There ’ s no evidence, there ’ s nothing I believe. ”
Early in the administration, at a National Security Council briefi ng, there were a bunch of photos put on the table and it was alleged that this satellite picture of what looked like a warehouse that you could fi nd anywhere in the world was a production center for weapons of mass destruction. I said, I ’ ve spent a lot of time going around the world, producing goods all over the world, and have seen a lot of factories and warehouses. How can you tell me this one is a center for producing weapons of mass destruction? There ’ s nothing here that tells you that? You may assign it that, but there ’ s nothing here that tells you that.
One of the things I found really interesting out of this experience is that even today, people that I have a lot of regard for their intellect, like Bill Clinton, still say they believed the evidence was there. I ’ ve never had this conversation with him, but it ’ s hard for me to believe a guy who ’ s as smart as he is doesn ’ t know the difference between an allegation and evidence — especially someone who ’ s trained as he is as a lawyer. I ’ ve been astounded, this is a bipartisan thing — people on both sides don ’ t seem to get the difference between evidence and what they call intelligence, which I would call not intelligence, just a bunch of fabrications.
So I was working my way to the margins of what endurance that people had for me, both in economic policy and in everything else I encountered. I have to admit some of the things that I said during this period probably ought to have been tempered. For example, we were struggling with trying to get the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank out of the business of effectively bailing out private sector lenders who ’ d given money to developing countries with the expectation that the people of the United States and other tax - paying people around the world would bail out the private sector lenders. I said (probably not very advisedly), “ Before we give any more money to Argentina, we ought to make sure it ’ s not going to go to a Swiss bank account. ”
Which was, I admit, not very diplomatic, but it was true — and interestingly enough, in a few weeks a guy who had been the c16.indd 212
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president of Argentina said, without any prompting from me,
“ Well it was true he had money in a Swiss bank account, but it was all his own. ”
So in any event, as we moved past the election in 2002 and we had this continued conversation, a really heated conversation with the vice president about what I considered to be the inadvisability of a further tax cut, I got a call, early in December. I was in my offi ce having a meeting with a group of people and my secretary came in and said, “ The vice president ’ s on the phone and would like to talk to you. ” And so, as it always happens when you get this kind of a call, the people get up and go in the other room so that you can have a private conversation with the vice president or the president if he calls. The vice president