Fox The Big Story with John Gibson - Transcript

Fox News Network

SHOW: THE BIG STORY WITH JOHN GIBSON (17:44)

HEADLINE: Interview with Sen. Jack Reid (D) Rhode Island

GUESTS: Jack Reid

BYLINE: John Gibson, Heather Nauert

BODY:
[FOX NEWS ALERT]

GIBSON: This is a Fox News Alert. Four bodies have been found in Iraq, and the US State Department is now trying to contact the families of seven missing US citizens in Iraq. But it has no confirmation on the identities of the bodies that have been found. The quote is, "We do know that four bodies have been found, but we don't have any confirmation of their identities." That comes from a State Department official who asked not to be named. He continued. "We have been in contact with the families of the seven missing Americans." Once again, four bodies have been found that appear to be bodies of the seven Americans who were missing from about a week ago. That in Iraq this afternoon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[HONKING]

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GIBSON: Besides our military, there are thousands of other men and women risking their lives for a paycheck in Iraq. Four bodies found near Baghdad today believed to be four American contractors missing since Friday. Heather Nauert is here with more on the risky contractor business.

NAUERT: Hi there, John. Well, some contractors working in Iraq are former military, and others are just regular civilians. All of them, of course, risking their lives working in the dangerous country. Some of them doing jobs that our forces used to do, like delivering supplies. Now, others are protecting foreign civilians, like engineers working on pipelines and journalists reporting from Iraq. Washington, though, now wants more details about what exactly these contractors are doing in Iraq. We're joined by Senator Jack Reid of Rhode Island. And that's today's big question. Senator, should the government begin to regulate contractors in Iraq?

SEN. JACK REID (D) RHODE ISLAND: Well, I think we have to regulate these contractors, Heather. We're responsible for all security in the country. We are the sovereign authority until June 30. We have to know who is there, what they are doing, not only for their protection, which is vitally important, but also that our military forces can coordinate effectively and insure that their mission is also accomplished.

NAUERT: Now, additional guidelines certainly won't prevent them or other civilians from getting killed or necessarily make them any safer, so what exactly would you hope to do, and what's the point?

REID: Well, the point is without coordination, we could find contractors who cannot call for support of American military. We can have American military officials that have plans or areas that they don't want contractors to operate in. They have to be able to communicate with these contractors. This is in many respects a large paramilitary force. And all of our forces have to be under some type of unified command structure so that we can account for them and insure that we don't have incidents like we've seen over the last several weeks.

NAUERT: Sure. Now, my understanding is that many of the contractors over there, of course, are very concerned about the routes that they take when they're driving from one part of the country to the other. And that oftentimes they will, in fact, at least speak with our military to say, hey, here is where we're going. How does this road look? And exchanging information like that. Are you saying that's not being done enough?

REID: I think it's been done on an ad hoc basis. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not. Our letter, which I drafted and sent to Secretary Rumsfeld, asked him to demonstrate to us that there is adequate coordination, that we know who these contractors are. I mean, after all, some of these, as you point out, Heather, are engineers, technical specialists. Others are armed paramilitary.

NAUERT: Now, not all of them, of course, are carrying weapons over we should point out.

REID: No, they're not. It's been estimated, I think, that thousands are. The first question we asked is how many are armed, how many are acting in a military capacity or security capacity? All of these forces, not just these contractor forces, but Iraqi security forces, have to be coordinated, and that coordination must be done by our military commanders there.

NAUERT: Now, in a country like Iraq where practically every civilian over there carries an AK-47 and have weapons, I mean, you're not actually trying to take away their weapons and prevent them from ...

REID: Absolutely not.

NAUERT: ... from protecting themselves?

REID: Absolutely not.

NAUERT: Many of these guys aren't doing offensive work, but rather those who are carrying weapons and who do fire back are simply firing back because they have been attacked.

REID: Well, that's true. They should have weapons to defend themselves, but, frankly, in Iraq, particularly, we should know where all of our friendly forces are. And this is almost a unique situation. I don't recall in other operations we had so many nonmilitary armed American personnel or allied personnel operating in the same routes that we're using, going to the same areas our military is using. This is a basic coordination problem.

NAUERT: Senator, let me just ask you real quickly, don't they relieve-or do they relieve the burden of our military in a sense so that our military can focus on the job that it needs to do while these guys do something else? Just quickly.

REID: They do relieve the burden, but we have to make sure that that's coordinated. And at this point, no one is quite sure it's coordinated.

NAUERT: All right, Senator Reid, thank you so much for joining us today.

REID: Thank you.

GIBSON: All right, Heather, thank you.