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HEADLINE: Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, discuss the findings and suggestions of the 9-11 Commission

ANCHORS: GLORIA BORGER

BODY:
GLORIA BORGER, co-host:

And welcome back.

The final report on 9/11 had sharp criticism of Congress for failing to act as a watchdog for the nation's intelligence agencies. So what's Capitol Hill doing to prevent future failures? Joining me now, the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas and Democratic Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.

Thanks to both of you for being with us tonight. Let me start with you, Senator Roberts. Today Senator Lieberman came out, called for a special session to look at or perhaps enact the legislation that the commission recommended today. What do you say to that?

Senator PAT ROBERTS (Republican, Kansas; Chair, Intelligence Committee): I don't know if we need a special session. I think most members of Congress, if not all, are very laudatory in regards to the 9-11 Commission's work. Senator Rockefeller and I are going to have the 9-11 Commission certainly before the Intelligence Committee, and we will have enough time to really understand all of the details as they have recommended a counterterrorism center, they have recommended a national intelligence director. And then they've recommended, in sort of a sharp poke in the ribs to the Congress, we better get our act together because there are too many committees involved to conduct real oversight of the Intelligence Committee.

BORGER: Well, do you agree with that? Senator Roberts, do you agree with that? Are there too many committees involved?

Sen. ROBERTS: Yes, I think it's too fractured. I'm not saying that to be critical of any of the other committees. But you had Tom Ridge, who testified he had to come up here-he's the director of Homeland Security-to 80 different committees. That's ridiculous. But I think that both Jay and I want to take a good hard look and let's do this right. I don't know if, in fact, we could have a special session during the break. Everybody's made an awful lot of plans. We have determined that if, in fact, the president would send up a nominee to be the DCI, the director of central intelligence, that both Jay and I would come back.

But you know, let's make sure that you understand that we are taking this report very seriously; we are taking the recommendations very seriously. The 511-page report that we issued over the past year in regards to the prewar intelligence on Iraq, those conclusions literally beg for major reform, and the 9-11 Commission has said, yes, here is major reform.

BORGER: Well, let's talk about that. Senator Rockefeller, the idea of a national counterterrorism center with a Cabinet rank national intelligence director who reports directly to the president of the United States-do you like those ideas?

Senator JAY ROCKEFELLER (Democrat, West Virginia; Vice Chair, Intelligence Committee): First of all, Cabinet rank, but not in the Cabinet, and that's a very important distinction. Secondly, I agree virtually totally with what Pat Roberts said, that it's an extraordinarily bold, strong report, but that I think Pat Roberts and I have long agreed that when-you know, Americans love a fast solution; Congress loves a fast solution, a silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. Even the 9-11 Commission is no silver bullet and does not pretend to be one. So what I think we need to do is, if we need a special session, that's fine, but we need to really vet it thoroughly.

BORGER: But let me play for both of you something...

Sen. ROCKEFELLER: But I want to say something else.

BORGER: OK.

Sen. ROCKEFELLER: I think Pat Roberts' and my worst nightmare is we would do a good job as a Congress in terms of the intelligence community and the executive branch of government and all of that, the rearranging of all of that, but that somehow we in Congress, anciently turf-conscious, would not rise to the challenge. And I think Pat Roberts and I are determined that the Congress has to, in fact, do the right things.

BORGER: OK.

Sen. ROCKEFELLER: And that's going to be hard.

BORGER: OK. Well, Senators, I want to play for you something that Commissioner Thompson said today, clearly throwing the ball in Congress' court on this. And then I want to get Senator Roberts to react.

Mr. JAMES R. THOMPSON (9-11 Commission Member): If these reforms are not the best that can be done for the American people, then the Congress and the president need to tell us what's better. But if there is nothing better, they need to be enacted and enacted speedily, because if something bad happens while these recommendations are sitting there, the American people will quickly fix political responsibility for failure, and that responsibility may last for generations, and they will be entitled to do that.

BORGER: Senator Roberts, your response to that?

Sen. ROBERTS: Well, I agree with that. I don't think anybody would disagree with that. But what Jay and I are trying to point out is that we're going to have the commission before the Intelligence Committee. Perhaps what the chairman really doesn't know yet is that we have already started our reform hearings; we had them on Tuesday. There are some questions about the specifics of how their major reforms would work. But I am in general agreement with the majority of the reforms, more especially what Senator Rockefeller has talked about, and that is the fractured way in the Congress that we deal as an independent oversight entity with clout. Right now we don't have clout. Now I don't know if we can really get out of this business of turf battles or not.

BORGER: Right.

Sen. ROBERTS: But this issue is paramount. And hopefully with public support, and hopefully with the 9-11 Commission, we can make progress. Whether we enact that same package exactly isn't important so much as it is we have the hearings and that we do the right thing, we do it very deliberately and we do it so we do no harm and we really guard against the law of unintended effects. It's important to pass legislation. It is important to get this major initiative done. The president have agreed with that. We agree with it.

BORGER: Right.

Sen. ROBERTS: But it's just as important to do it right, and we will do it right.

BORGER: OK, Senator Rockefeller, but let's be honest here. What we're talking about in Congress is taking power away from people and giving it to other people. There are turf battles that are going on, people who want to be in charge of one thing and in charge of another thing, and you have the very fractured process up there. The 9-11 Commission called it dysfunctional. It says that homeland security is becoming pork-barrel projects. How do you in Congress take away power, give power to you folks, take away power from other folks?

Sen. ROCKEFELLER: That will be the test of this, will it not? I mean, I think Pat Roberts has again put it correctly. We can do everything in terms of the FBI, Homeland Security, the CIA, DIA, all of the various intelligence agencies, 15 of them. We can do that correctly and follow the commission's report or not. But if we don't reform ourselves-look, this is my theory. I think up until before 9/11 that the United States government and the intelligence community really welcomed the chance not to be well-oversighted by the Congress. I think they could get away with it. I think they did get away with it. Now everything has changed, and so in Congress there are some people gearing up to stop proper oversight and the right of investigation, which the intelligence committees have. It's a very serious battle that's shaping up, and it's one that the country needs to have won successfully. And Pat and I are going to go into it full force.

BORGER: Senator Roberts, what about that charge, though, that the commission made that homeland security funding has become just a bunch of pork barrel and that instead cities like Washington and New York ought to be getting more money for homeland security instead of spreading it around congressional districts of members who happen to have the most seniority or serve on the right committees?

Sen. ROBERTS: Well, I think Thad Cochran, who's the chairman of the Appropriations Committee on homeland security, has a bill to get that done, and there are no earmarks, absolutely none. There will be a new criteria to try to prioritize where the threats may occur. Everybody knows that that may be Los Angeles, maybe Chicago, maybe New York, certainly Washington. So you have to really prioritize the threats. But let me also point out that I come from a rural area. Agriterrorism is a threat. And so the biggest thing to do is try to prioritize the threat according to the intelligence and then try to do the best you can. I would agree to spread it out all over America and end up with a gymnasium next to-What?--a fire station, that's not doing the job, and I think we have to change that if, in fact, it needs to be changed.

BORGER: OK. Thanks so much, Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who are going to have to fix this problem. Thanks to both of you.

Sen. ROBERTS: Thank you.

Sen. ROCKEFELLER: Thank you.