CNBC Capital Report - Transcript
CNBC News Transcripts
SHOW: Capital Report (7:00 PM ET) - CNBC
HEADLINE: Senators Mitch McConnell and Bob Graham discuss the 9/11 Commission's public hearing and sparring between Richard Clarke and the Bush administration
ANCHORS: GLORIA BORGER
BODY:
GLORIA BORGER, co-host:
Our top story tonight: Clinton and Bush administration officials on the hot seat, defending their strategies against al-Qaida. Current Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their predecessors were grilled by members of the 9/11 Commission in a public hearing today. Here's some of what they had to say.
Former Secretary MADELEINE ALBRIGHT (State Department): I can say with confidence that President Clinton and his team did everything we could, everything we could think of, based on the knowledge we had to protect our people and disrupt and defeat al-Qaida.
Secretary COLIN POWELL (State Department): This administration came in fully recognizing the threat presented to the United States and its interests and allies around the world by terrorism. We went to work on it immediately. The president made it clear it was a high priority.
Secretary DONALD RUMSFELD (Defense Department): Even if bin Laden had been captured or killed in the weeks before September 11th, no one I know believes that it would necessarily have prevented September 11th. If actionable intelligence had appeared, which it did not, 9/11 would likely still have happened, and ironically, much of the world would likely have called the September 11th attack an al-Qaida retaliation for the US provocation of capturing or killing bin Laden.
BORGER: And today President Bush said he would have moved more quickly against al-Qaida if he had known an attack was imminent. It was his first direct response to criticisms raised by former terrorism adviser Richard Clarke in a controversial new book.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: Had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September the 11th, we would have acted. We have been chasing down al-Qaida ever since they attacked. We've captured or killed two-thirds of their known leaders, and we're still pursuing them. And we will continue to pursue them so long as I'm the president of the United States.
BORGER: Let's go now to Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Florida Senator Bob Graham, a former Democratic presidential candidate. They both join us from Capitol hill.
Thanks so much for being with us. Let me start with you, Senator McConnell. We'll start first with Richard Clarke's book which is causing is such a stir. He speaks of a misguided focus on Iraq in this administration. He said in the book-and let me read you both something that he said-'The truth was also that the Principals Committee was meeting with a full agenda and a backlog of Bush priority issues: the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto environment agreement and Iraq. There was no time for terrorism.' Senator McConnell, what do you think of that?
Senator MITCH McCONNELL (Republican, Kentucky): Well, this is the guy, remember, who was in charge of the counterterrorism effort for the previous decade. He's the one who was advising President Clinton after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, after the US Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 and after the US Cole was bombed in 2000. And what kind of...
BORGER: So you're saying he has no credibility, no credibility?
Sen. McCONNELL: No credibility at all. I mean, he was in charge of giving President Clinton advice about what to do about terrorism. What did they do? They fired off a couple of cruise missiles, took out a pharmacy in the Sudan making medicines for children and maybe knocked out a tent and a couple of camels in Afghanistan. This guy is obviously auditioning for a job in the Kerry administration, if there is to be one, and his best friend, of course, is Senator Kerry's best foreign policy adviser. This is a clear case of Washington sour grapes and job shopping for what he hopes will be a new administration.
BORGER: Senator Graham, Washington sour grapes and job shopping?
Senator BOB GRAHAM (Democrat, Florida; Intelligence Committee Chairman): Well, this, unfortunately, has become the line, and that is you don't answer the question, you besmirch the speaker. I believe that Richard Clarke wrote the truth when he said that this administration has placed Iraq ahead of the war on terrorism. As an example of that, less than six months after the war in Afghanistan started in October of 2001, we were already moving intelligence and military personnel out of Iraq to get ready for the war against-out of Afghanistan to get ready for the war against Iraq. The consequence of that was that we allowed Osama bin Laden to escape into Pakistan, al-Qaida to regenerate and become an even more violent force than it was before September the 11th. So I think the actions of this administration demonstrate the truth of Mr. Clarke's statement that Iraq was a higher priority than the war on terror for President Bush.
BORGER: Senator McConnell, former Senator Bob Kerrey, who's on the 9/11 Commission, spoke a lot today about the culpability, if you will, of both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. And let's hear what he said to Colin Powell first and then get you to respond.
Former Senator BOB KERREY (Democrat, Nebraska; 9/11 Commission Member): It pains me to have to say that on the 11 September that 19 men with less than half a million dollars defeated every single defensive mechanism we had in place, utterly. It wasn't even a close call.
Sec. POWELL: In this whole period, to say that-use military force to get al-Qaida when it wasn't going to be a surgical strike. Anybody who thinks that, you know, Osama bin Laden might just be laying around somewhere and you can go pick him up, well, maybe, good luck.
BORGER: What do you say to that?
Sen. McCONNELL: Well, what I say is that Bob was just saying a few minutes ago that he thought the effort in Afghanistan had been a failure. We're talking about the response to 9/11. Afghanistan has been freed. The Taliban is gone. They have a new constitution. They're going to have elections next summer.
BORGER: Osama bin Laden is still at large, though, Senator.
Sen. McCONNELL: Yes, but who could seriously argue that the world is less safe today with a new regime in Afghanistan and a new regime in Iraq? That is clearly by any standard a safer world today than we had before 9/11. And that's been the president's response to what happened on 9/11. In terms of what happened before then, virtually all of that was during the Clinton administration when Mr. Clarke was in charge of the counterterrorism effort.
BORGER: OK. Well, let's play a bite of what former Senator Kerrey said to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and we'll get Senator Graham to respond to it.
Sen. KERREY: And I keep hearing the excuse 'We didn't have actionable intelligence.' Well, what the hell does that say to al-Qaida? I mean, basically they knew, beginning of 1993, it seems to me, that there was going to be limited, if any, use of military and that they were ultimately free to do whatever they wanted.
Ms. ALBRIGHT: We used every single tool we had in terms of trying to figure out what the right targets would be and how to go about dealing with what we knew to be a major threat. And I reviewed it and I'm satisfied that we did what we could given the intelligence we had and pre-9/11, if I might say.
BORGER: Senator Graham, did the Clinton administration do everything that it could?
Sen. GRAHAM: Our Joint Inquiry Committee was told by a leading figure in the Clinton administration that the biggest mistake that they had made during the 1990s was that they had known about the existence of the al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan, they knew what they were doing and they knew where they were and they did not take effective actions to eliminate those training camps which were the breeding ground of thousands of future terrorists. The irony of this situation is that we are doing exactly the same thing today, not in Afghanistan, but in Syria and the Syrian-controlled areas of Lebanon, where Hezbollah is operating more sophisticated training camps than al-Qaida did, preparing the next generation of their terrorists. And I'm fearful that with what has just happened in Gaza, the killing of the leader of Hamas, which has close relationships with Hezbollah, that Israel may begin to pay a price for our failure to take out the training camps in Syria and the controlled areas of Lebanon.
BORGER: Senator McConnell, I just want to ask you one last question about this alleged obsession with Iraq and the White House that Richard Clarke says the administration has. This is not the first time that this kind of criticism has been leveled at the administration. We heard it from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in his book. If that's not the case, how can both of these former high-ranking officials in the Bush White House come out with the same impression?
Sen. McCONNELL: I'm sure Mr. Clarke knew that the policy of the Clinton administration was to change the regime in Iraq. We actually had that vote in 1998. So the notion that we should change the regime in Iraq was not unique with the Bush administration; it was the policy of the Clinton administration. The only difference was that President Bush acted. Saddam Hussein is out of power; he's no longer murdering his own people. The 300,000 people that he killed over a quarter of a century cannot be brought back to life, regretfully, but this scourge has been removed. He will no longer be able to use weapons of mass destruction as he did on two different occasions during his regime. And to seriously argue that the world is somehow not safer with Saddam Hussein removed from power and the Taliban gone in Afghanistan, it seems to me, is on its face absurd.
BORGER: OK. Se...
Sen. GRAHAM: Gloria, if I could just say, there was one other critical thing...
BORGER: Very quickly. Go ahead.
Sen. GRAHAM: ...one other critical thing that happened after 1998 with September the 11th. We suddenly had to make a choice. Was Iraq our greater enemy, or was al-Qaida and another international terrorists? I think clearly the terrorists were the ones that had the greater capability to kill Americans. They should have been, they should continue to be today our number-one target.
BORGER: OK. Senators Bob Graham and Mitch McConnell, thanks so much for being with us.
Sen. GRAHAM: Thank you.
BORGER: And, Senator McConnell, next time I'll give you the last word.
Sen. McCONNELL: Thank you.
BORGER: Thanks a lot.