CNBC News Transcripts
SHOW: The News on CNBC (8:00 PM ET) - CNBC
HEADLINE: Senator Joseph Biden discusses lack of security on rail lines
ANCHORS: JOHN SEIGENTHALER
BODY:
JOHN SEIGENTHALER, anchor:
Delaware Senator Joe Biden is the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and he joins us now from Wilmington, Delaware.
Senator JOSEPH BIDEN (Democrat, Foriegn Relations Committee): Thanks, John.
SEIGENTHALER: Senator, it's good to see you.
Sen. BIDEN: Good to see you back.
SEIGENTHALER: Thank you for being with us. First of all, let's-let's talk about Spain for a second. What-what does the change in this situation, the political situation in Spain really mean for the United States?
Sen. BIDEN: I think it's too hard to tell right now. It's a little premature. We don't-I don't know whether or not the Spanish election de-dethroning Aznar as prime minister was because Aznar didn't give them the straight scoop the three days before or two days before after the bombing or whether it was because, as some are suggesting, that-that the Spanish people thought the bombing was because of the association with the United States of America. It matters which it was in one sense. In another sense, it doesn't matter at all because that's what al-Qaeda is going to offer it to be. And I think this puts an overwhelming burden back at-to use the neoconservative Mr. Kagan's words today, he said, 'The Bush administration has a crisis on its hands, must start making up for lost time in mending transatlantic ties.' I think that's what it means for America and for this administration.
SEIGENTHALER: But if Spain's new prime minister pulls troops out of Iraq, as he says he will do, what does that mean for the coalition?
Sen. BIDEN: Well, he says he will do that only if there is no significant UN role for-in Iraq. And what I and others within the administration as well have been pushing the president on is that when Paul Bremer leaves on June the 30th, he should be replaced by essentially a high commissioner like we had in Kosovo, a fellow who like Kirschner, who was in Kosovo, who would report directly to the Security Council of which we're a member. And NATO forces would come in under the command of the United States of America supreme allied commander. And we take an American face off of this occupation and invest the rest of the world in its success. That's what Aznar is looking for-excuse me, that's what Aznar's successor is looking for. And that's what I thought the purpose of turning sovereignty over temporarily at least to this new governing council and leaving was all about. But the administration hasn't made up its mind about that yet.
SEIGENTHALER: What about homeland security in relation to the Madrid attra-attacks? You've been very outspoken and-and-and very concerned about mass transit and the vulnerability of our trains in this country.
Sen. BIDEN: It's overwhelming. Three hundred and fifty thousand people today were in six tunnels underneath New York City. A thousand trains went through the Baltimore Tunnel. And tunnel-and trains are going underneath the Supreme Court of the United States Congress right now. And guess what, none of them have adequate security. None of them have ventilation. None of them have escape routes. None of them are-are in a situation where we'd be able to prevent a terrorist act-attack. And one metro liner has as many people as a full 747. And I've been pleading-I've been pleading with the administration since two weeks after 9/11, when we came up with $15 billion for the airline industry, 3 billion for security, to do something. And they've done virtually nothing about it.
SEIGENTHALER: What do you want to see done?
Sen. BIDEN: What I want to see done is we have a $900 million contract all ready to go that would repair all of those tunnels that I just mentioned so they can be guarded more secure and, God forbid, if anything happened, people's lives saved. Secondly, I want to put another $500 million, which I've been proposing, into security. And it goes all the way for making sure that there are electric fences around the various places where the switches are, where the controls are for-for the railroad and for the whole Northeast and West, all-all the United States, putting dogs on passenger trains.
John, look at the New York Times front page today. What are the French doing? They're going from-a-a great big picture. A French policeman with a dog. I want to hire more Amtrak cops. I want to have bomb-sniffing dogs that are available. I want to be able to increase the possibility that we could prevent this from happening.
SEIGENTHALER: I know you want something done. But the argument has been, look, there are hundreds of thousands of miles of railroad track. You can't put a fence up around all of it.
Sen. BIDEN: No, you can't. But what you can do, John, is you can keep a situation from occurring in a tunnel underneath New York, where you have 1,000 people killed. You can do that, John.
SEIGENTHALER: When-when-why do you think the Bush administration hasn't responded to this?
Sen. BIDEN: Tax cuts. Look, you had the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, a bipartisan mainly established organization, usually pro-Republican coming out and saying, 'We are underspending by almost $100 billion, the amount of money over the next five years we have to spend on-spend on national security. We have-in the United States of America, we have 750 or so chemical plants that expose-if something serious happened, over 100,000 people would be in jeopardy. We have something like 45 or 50 of them that would expose a million people if the chemicals were released from those plants. There's virtually no security around those.
SEIGENTHALER: Are you talking about...
Sen. BIDEN: This is not rocket science.
SEIGENTHALER: Are you talking about running people through metal detectors like they do...
Sen. BIDEN: No.
SEIGENTHALER: ...in airplanes?
Sen. BIDEN: No. What I'm talking about is, for example, having dogs on trains that walk up and down the aisle and just sniff the baggies, number one. Number two, making sure that the places where the CIA has already warned us are likely to be targets of terrorism are, in fact, guarded, in fact, have the capacity to allow people to escape if, God forbid, something happened, like those tunnels. They were built-the Baltimore Tunnel in 1869, the six tunnels under New York City around 1910. They are in terrible shape. And, by the way, it might be the only thing in this administration's economic policy that could put people to work.
SEIGENTHALER: Senator, it's good to see you. Thanks very much for joining us tonight. We appreciate it.
Sen. BIDEN: I'm sorry for sounding so frustrated, but I'm frustrated.
SEIGENTHALER: Obviously, this is on your mind. You wanted to get it off your chest. And we're glad you did it on this program.
Sen. BIDEN: Thank you.
SEIGENTHALER: Thank you.
And we should note that we asked Amtrak, the Homeland Security Department and local officials in the New York area to join us tonight, but they all declined. Asa Hutchinson is in charge of transportation security for the Homeland Security Department. Here's what he said yesterday on the "Today" show, and I quote, "We've invested $115 million in assistance for grants for increases in security in rail and transit."
Up next, an NBC News exclusive, the hunt for Osama bin Laden. If the US had him in sight, why did they let him go? We'll show you the secret videotape and talk exclusively with former CIA director, James Woolsey, when we come back.
And still to come, more than 30 years before taking on President Bush, a young John Kerry tangled with a different Republican White House. Tonight, the tale of the tape from the Nixon administration. We'll talk live with two men who were there. Why the president-why was he concerned about this young protester? We'll be right back.