The Unknown Known
1
Let me put up this next memo.
You want me to read this?
Yes, please.
"February 4, 2004.
Subject:
What you know.There are known knowns.
There are known unknowns.
There are unknown unknowns.
But there are also
unknown knowns.
That is to say,
things that you think you know
that it turns out
you did not."
I wonder if in the future
public figures will write
as many memos as I did.
I doubt it.
I must have gotten
in the habit of dictating
things that were important.
Not a diary.
Not a journal.
They're almost all
working documents.
Now, they've become historical
documents in retrospect,
but at the time,
they all had a purpose.
In the later years
of my using the dictaphone,
why, they were called
snowflakes,
because they were
on white paper.
What would you say
might be?
They said I dictated 20,000
just in the last six years
at the Pentagon.
There have to be millions.
"July 27, 2001."
A memo to Condoleezza Rice
concerning Iraq.
"We have discussed Iraq
on a number of occasions.
The discussions
have been inconclusive.
Sanctions are being limited
in a way that cannot weaken
Saddam Hussein.
We can publicly acknowledge
that the sanctions don't work
over extended periods
and stop the pretense
of having a policy
that is keeping Saddam
'in the box'
when we know he has crawled
a good distance out of the box.
Within a few years,
the U.S. will undoubtedly
have to confront
a Saddam armed
with nuclear weapons.
If Saddam's regime
were oustered,
we would have
a much-improved position
in the region
and elsewhere."
Why the obsession
with Iraq and Saddam?
Well, you love that word,
"obsession."
I can see the glow
in your face when you say it.
Well, I'm an obsessive person.
Are you? I'm not.
I'm...
I'm cool.
I'm measured.
If you look
at the range of my memos,
there might be 1/10 of 1%
about Iraq.
The reason I was concerned
about Iraq
is 'cause four-star generals
would come to me and say,
"Mr. secretary,
we have a problem.
Our orders are to fly over
the northern part of Iraq
and the Southern part of Iraq
on a daily basis,
with the Brits,
and we are getting shot at.
At some moment...
could be tomorrow,
could be next month,
could be next year...
one of our planes
is gonna be shot down
and our pilots and crews
are gonna be killed
or they're gonna be
captured."
The question will be,
"what in the world were
What was
the cost-benefit ratio?
What was our country gaining?"
So you sit down and you say,
if I can get
the president's attention.
Remind him that our planes
are being shot at,
remind him that we don't have
and remind him that we've got
Not an obsession.
A very measured,
nuanced approach,
I think.
In my confirmation hearing
when I was nominated
to be secretary of defense,
the best question
I was asked was,
"what do you worry about
when you go to bed at night?"
And my answer was, in effect,
"intelligence.
The danger
that we can be surprised
because of
a failure of imagining
what might happen
in the world."
There are known knowns,
the things we know we know.
There are known unknowns,
the things we know
we don't know.
There are also
that third category
of unknown unknowns,
the things we don't know
we don't know.
And you can only know more
about those things
by imagining what they might be.
Pearl harbor was
a failure of imagination.
We didn't know we didn't know
that they could do what they
did the way they did it.
We had people working
on breaking codes.
We had people thinking through,
"what are the kinds of things
they might do?"
And lo and behold,
the carriers were able to,
on a Sunday morning,
get very close to Hawaii,
launch their planes, and
impose enormous destruction.
Was it failure of imagination
or failure to look
at the intelligence
that was available?
They had thought through
a great many
more obvious possibilities.
People were chasing
the wrong rabbit.
That one possibility
was not something
that they had imagined
was likely.
"July 23, 2001.
Subject:
'Pearl harbor post-mortem.'
in some future hearing,
I am going to say
that I do not want
to be sitting before this panel
in a modern-day version
of a pearl harbor post-mortem:
Who didn't do what,
when, where, and why.
None of us would want
to have to be back here
going through that agony."
A month or so before
September 11, 2001,
namely me, was prescient.
I wasn't.
I simply had read enough history
that I worried.
American 11, climb,
American 11, climb,
American 11, Boston.
The American on the frequency,
how do you hear me?
American 11,
if you hear Boston center
re-contact Boston center
on 127.82.
That's American 11, 127.82.
My military assistant,
admiral Ed Giambastiani,
came in and said,
"a plane has hit
It was assumed
to be an accident.
And I went into my office
from the conference room,
and admiral Giambastiani said,
"another plane has hit
the other world
trade center tower."
And of course, at that point,
it wasn't an accident;
It was an attack.
Within minutes,
I felt the Pentagon shake.
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"The Unknown Known" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/the_unknown_known_21549>.
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