January 11, 2001: Rumsfeld Warns of Surprise Attack Like Pearl Harbor

At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense-designate Donald Rumsfeld warns of the danger of a surprise attack like Pearl Harbor happening again. He testifies, “We all know that history is filled with instances where people were surprised. There were plenty of signals, plenty of warnings, plenty of cautions. But they weren’t taken aboard. They didn’t register. They weren’t sufficient to cause a person to act on those.” He continues, “We know that the thing that tends to register on people is fear, and we know that that tends to happen after there’s a Pearl Harbor, tends to happen after there’s a crisis. And that’s too late for us. We’ve got to be smarter than that. We’ve got to be wiser than that. We have to be more forward-looking.” As ABC News later comments, “eight months to the day after his warning of a surprise attack, Rumsfeld’s fears became reality with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.” [CNN, 1/11/2001; Scarborough, 2004, pp. 165-166; ABC News, 3/25/2004] Rumsfeld will again refer to the danger of military surprises four months later, during meetings with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees (see May 23-24, 2001).