October 14, 2001	Sunday	Rajab 26, 1422

WASHINGTON, Oct 13: US Vice President Dick Cheney said on Friday he and President Bush would avoid appearing together at large public gatherings to avoid becoming an enticing target for groups seeking to “decapitate” the US government.

It fell to Cheney, who spent fours days this week in an undisclosed location as a security precaution to keep the president and his deputy apart in case of a fresh attack on America, to give the first detailed look into how Washington functioned in its first war of the 21st century.

Interviewed by Jim Lehrer of PBS’ “Newshour,” Cheney said top officials discussed strategy in a “Situation Room” with some, Cheney among them, using video conferencing to participate.

“You’ve got a TV set — a big screen that’s divided up into at least four segments so you’ve got State, Justice, CIA, Defense tied in over at the Situation Room at the White House and from my secure location, and it’s all real-time video — good, high quality video — where you have a conversation. The only difference is the participants aren’t necessarily all around the same table,” Cheney said.

Cheney gave the insider’s look into how the United States was conducting its global war on terrorism, saying President George W. Bush was making hands-on, day-to-day decisions on every front in the conflict.

The vice president portrayed a U.S. administration unwilling to accept coincidence as the reason for unexplained incidents — such as reports this week of anthrax outbreaks — until they had been fully investigated and discounted.

WATERSHED EVENT: Cheney said the Sept 11 attack on New York and Washington was a watershed in American history, ending any sense that the United States was invulnerable.

“A war was something that took place overseas, across the ocean,” he said.

“We might send 500,000 troops to the Gulf to liberate Kuwait or to defend Europe or Korea or Vietnam or conduct operations in Somalia or elsewhere. But we were behind our oceans, behind the Pacific and the Atlantic, and there wasn’t really anybody who threatened us, other than the Cold War, and there we dealt with that through deterrence and arms controls treaties and so forth.”—Reuters