Excerpt from Secretary of State Colin Powell Interview with ABC's This Week, September 23, 2001

Excerpt from Secretary of State Colin Powell Interview with ABC's This Week, September 23, 2001
Interview on ABC's This Week

Secretary Colin L. Powell
Washington, DC
September 23, 2001

QUESTION: Okay, terrorism exists throughout the world. President Bush spoke to that, of course, in his address to the Congress and the American people. Here are some of the words that he used: Our war on terror will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. Mr. Secretary, the State Department has 31 organizations as foreign terrorist organizations on its list. How many of these have global reach?

SECRETARY POWELL: Quite a few of them. And quite a few of them will go after our interests in the regions that they are located in and right here at home. And so we have to treat all of them as potentially having the capacity to affect us in a global way. Or to affect our friends and interests in other parts of the world.

For example, we have designated three groups in Colombia alone as being terrorist organizations, and we are working with the Colombian Government to protect their democracy against the threat provided or presented by these terrorist organizations.

As of September 24, 2001, this document was also available online at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2001/index.cfm?docid=5011