MSNBC "Scarborough Country" - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "Scarborough Country" - Transcript

HEADLINE: SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY For March 22, 2004

BYLINE: Dana Kennedy; Roger Cressey; Joe Scarborough

GUESTS: Shmuley Boteach; David Horowitz; Jennifer Giroux; Rahm Emanuel; Sean McCormack; Leslie Marshall; Roy Black

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

SCARBOROUGH: All right, thank you so much, Mr. McCormack.

And now let me bring in Congressman Rahm Emanuel, who served as senior adviser to President Clinton.

Congressman, what's your take on the statements made last night by Mr. Clarke?

(CROSSTALK)

REP. RAHM EMANUEL (D), ILLINOIS: Nobody believes that President Bush was told about 9/11 and he ignored it beforehand. Nobody believes, if he had information, that he totally ignored it.

There are two things that came out of this that are important. One, when they were told that terrorism was a priority, they chose to place it lower on the scale than their priorities of China, the missile defense system and Russia. Second is that rather than focus once post-9/11 that we dealt with al Qaeda, we knew al Qaeda was behind 9/11, rather than taking that and making that the entire focus, the resources were diverted to Iraq that had nothing to do with the war on terrorism, a la al Qaeda.

SCARBOROUGH: All right. Well, we, of course, disagree on that.

But I want to have you respond to what the vice president said in a radio interview today when he told Rush Limbaugh that Clarke was-quote-"out of the loop during the White House years." And here's more from Vice President Cheney about Richard Clarke.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "THE RUSH LIMBAUGH SHOW")

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The only thing I would say about Dick Clarke is that he was here throughout those eight years, going back to 1993 and the first attack on the World Trade Center, in '98, when the embassies were hit in East Africa, 2000, when the USS Cole was hit. And the question that ought to be asked is, you know, what were they doing in those days, when they-when he was in charge of counterterrorism efforts?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCARBOROUGH: Congressman, obviously, the '90s, we had a lot of attacks from Osama bin Laden and bin Laden. And, as you know, Osama bin Laden himself accused America of being a paper tiger for its failure to respond strongly in the 1990s. Is Dick Clarke really somebody that's in position to be attacking this president on his handling of counterterrorism?

EMANUEL: Well, Joe, there's a couple of questions there. I'll try to hit them all.

First of all, you know, Dick Clarke worked for Ronald Reagan, George Bush 41, Bill Clinton, and this president, so nobody can assume that he's a partisan hack. He's worked for all different administrations, Democrats and Republicans alike.

SCARBOROUGH: You don't think is a political attack?

(CROSSTALK)

EMANUEL: Joe, you asked me a question. I'm going to finish it. Do I have political implications? Absolutely. Do I think it was politics that motivated it? Absolutely not.

SCARBOROUGH: All right, thank you so much, Rahm Emanuel. We certainly appreciate you being with us tonight to talk about the story.

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