FOX "On The Record" - Transcript
Interview
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MS. VAN SUSTEREN: So should Speaker Pelosi resign? Joining us live is Congressman Pete Hoekstra, top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Nice to see you, sir.
REP. HOEKSTRA: Good to be here. Thank you.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: You wrote a letter on May 14th last week to the director of the CIA. Why did you write that letter to him?
REP. HOEKSTRA: I think we really need to clear the air. There's a lot of information that has not been shared, the memorandum of the meetings that we've had, the meeting notes getting ready, you know. What was the intent of the CIA when they went into the meetings? What did they want to brief us on?
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: I'm with you on getting all the documents. Their intent going in may not be as relevant to me because they may not have followed through. But any sort of notes contemporaneous with or written right afterwards, are we going to get those notes? Because that's fair to Speaker Pelosi. I assume she wants it aired, I assume.
REP. HOEKSTRA: I hope so. I think Speaker Pelosi has said she wants it out. The majority leader has said he wants it out. I want it out. I was the first one to ask for those documents to come out. That decision will ultimately be made by the president as to when he will release these notes. He's released a lot of other stuff. The legal opinions, he released those four weeks ago. This stuff fits hand in hand. There's nothing in these notes. I reviewed them two weeks ago. There's nothing in these notes that I believe warrants the documents to remain classified.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Did you see the full universe of documents relating to it? I guess September of '02 would be the most important meeting that we have focused on. Are you satisfied that you've seen all of them, or do you think there are others?
REP. HOEKSTRA: I've seen some, I don't know whether they're all there. You know, I've seen a sampling of them. I've seen the memorandum to the file that the CIA says is the complete set. Whether more will emerge later on I don't know.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: What do you make of former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who was known for keeping diaries, and apparently, according to these CIA notes, he was present at a certain number of briefings, yet his notes, he keeps these diaries, don't reflect the same thing. He was out of town for at least one of them.
REP. HOEKSTRA: Well, I think what happened in this case, and I'm not sure, but it appears that the CIA may have gone to Bob Graham and said, we may have records of you being at these certain meetings, and he came back. I think the list that we got from the CIA only had him in one meeting. I don't think it had him in four meetings. So I think they reconciled the differences. I'm sure that at some point in time he was in some of these meetings.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Why can't we just get the results? Why can't the president pick up the phone and say, Leon, I appointed you director of the CIA, you know, let's get these, as long as they don't jeopardize an ongoing covert operation or hurt someone? I mean, because it's unfair to the American people, it's unfair to the Congress and unfair to the speaker. You know, at least we ought to see these things.
REP. HOEKSTRA: That's right. The president can do it. Leon can do it very, very quickly. There's no reason these documents shouldn't come out. But I think the bigger issue, Greta, is how we ever got into this mess. What happened here is that, you know, Speaker Pelosi doesn't want to take accountability and responsibility for the actions that she took in 2002, 2003, first blaming the CIA, they didn't tell me, well, then they didn't tell me everything, then, well, they lied to me. And now, you know, Bush lied.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: You may be right. But I think the right thing to do is to get the facts before we sort of reach that conclusion. And with all due respect to sort of everybody involved is that the CIA, maybe they've done enormous work in protecting us, but also on their watch we've had 9/11, we've had the embassies in East Africa, we've had Pakistan doing testing on weapons, we have the weapons of mass destruction. So I mean, the CIA has not been perfect. I mean, they may have done great work we don't know about, and they have to keep it secret, so it really behooves us to get all the facts out.
REP. HOEKSTRA: It helps getting all the facts out. Those are two different issues, one of which is the performance on the threats and keeping America safe, the other is the accusation that the speaker made that they lied.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Except I hammered the Department of Homeland Security because there was that horrible publication where they named people as terrorists. And I thought to myself -- and she said it was an accident that those things got out. And I thought to myself, if you can't keep the booklet straight and getting them out, how can I be satisfied you can keep our borders safe? So I mean, in all fairness is that, you know, I think it is not beyond the pale for me to have some question about the documents I haven't seen that the CIA might have.
REP. HOEKSTRA: But I don't think you can go after them --
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: I'm not going after them. Oh, no. I'm asking for the -- I'm not going after -- believe me, I'm not going down there. I'm not going into --
REP. HOEKSTRA: You've learned the lesson that getting into a fight with the CIA is a bad idea. But yeah.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: I just want to see the facts that don't hurt anything so that we can be fair to everybody. And if Speaker Pelosi is wrong, you know, she ought to get, you know, a cuff on the side of the head or whatever has to be done.
REP. HOEKSTRA: But I think you do go back, and you break it into two different issues. One is the performance, how well they're doing their job. The second is whether they have misled or lied to Congress. Two very, very different issues.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Now, there's one thing that Greta Wire bloggers wrote me, and I agree with it. It sort of bugged me as well. In February of '03, instead of Speaker Pelosi going to a briefing, it was a staff member. Is that done routinely that staff members -- you know, I was horrified. I thought that it was done by only members of Congress. Do you send staff?
REP. HOEKSTRA: No, I don't send staff.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Do some people send staff to these briefings?
REP. HOEKSTRA: No. But remember, sometimes staff goes to briefings. But remember, the speaker, the minority leader, they get briefed every week. So sometimes the staffers are in the meeting, but they may come back, and they may have come back to the speaker, which is exactly what the staffer said. I came back, I told the minority leader, this is what we got briefed on. That following week, she probably had a briefing with the CIA where she could have said, hey, I want to get into detail and understand exactly what you're doing on enhanced interrogation techniques. These briefings with the speaker and minority leader happen every week.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Well, I just think when it's classified, I'd like to -- and maybe it's none of my business -- but I'd like to see only members of Congress have it and not their staff. But anyway, thank you, Congressman.
REP. HOEKSTRA: Thank you.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is with us here in Washington.
Nice to see you, Senator.
SEN. GRAHAM: Good to be with you.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: So Senator, you've threatened to call Speaker Pelosi to testify before a committee?
SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah. If we're going to keep looking back and find out who did what, I want to know what she knew and when she knew it. The only reason we're talking about this, like Peter says, is that the left wing of the Democratic Party is accusing Bush and Cheney of being war criminals, that the Bush-Cheney people committed a crime when they tried to come up with these interrogation techniques. My belief is that they were trying to defend the nation. And if you were trying to commit a crime, why would you tell your political enemies about it? So this is relevant only if you want to look back. I think we should look forward. But if we're going to look back, we're going to look at her.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Would it not be a good start to get all these documents? Because that seems to me is that, you know, they're trying --
SEN. GRAHAM: No. I think a good start is to apologize to the men and women who serve in the CIA and to get off this kick that Bush and Cheney are criminals and they're unethical, realize that we were attacked on September 11th, 2001, we were all worried about a new attack. She was briefed, at least in 2003, about waterboarding. Why would you tell somebody about waterboarding if you didn't intend to use it, in 2002?
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: I mean, if Speaker Pelosi is convinced she's right -- first of all, I have no idea whether she's right or wrong --
SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah, release the documents.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: -- yeah, release the documents. That's a good step.
SEN. GRAHAM: I'm not the president. President Obama should ask for the documents to be released.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Let me ask you this. Why do you think -- last week, Director of the CIA Panetta issued a statement which basically said, Speaker Pelosi, you're wrong. Do you think that he got the green light from the White House to do that?
SEN. GRAHAM: Well, I think he did it because he's in charge of an organization with great men and women, he felt like he needed to come to their aid. And the White House press briefer refuses to get into this because nobody wants to be around a political leader who is calling men and women who protect the country liars, and she should apologize. She's become toxic. She's hurting the country. She's bad for morale of the CIA. And she's trying to cover her own tracks. She knew what was going on. She's trying to have it both ways. She wants to accuse Bush of being a criminal, but she won't accept the fact that the nation was under attack and she was told about what was going on. She's a partisan person, she needs to get off of it.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: And you know, you may be totally right. I want to see the documents. I'm old fashioned.
SEN. GRAHAM: And I agree. I want her to apologize, I want to see the documents.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: And you know, if the documents totally back up, you know, what you say, I want her to apologize.
SEN. GRAHAM: Understand this. If she doesn't get this cleaned up, either apologize and move forward or we get the documents on the table, it does cripple her ability to lead the House. She's the third in line to the presidency of the United States. No one should be that close to the office of the president, being this irresponsible. So I'm all for releasing the documents, but I'm for looking forward. The best thing she could do for herself and the country is to apologize and move forward. If she's not willing to do that, let's bring her in and find out what she knew and when she knew it.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: What do you think the president -- I know you would say it's not your party --
SEN. GRAHAM: The president wishes this would go away.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: I know it's not your party, but I'm just curious whether or not you think that the director of the CIA wrote that letter and released that statement totally independent of the White House or not. Or do you think he got -- what's your guess?
SEN. GRAHAM: My guess is that no, they knew he was going to do it. And the reason they're no jumping to her defense is because they don't want any part of this. They know this is bad politics. It gets them off their agenda. And what she's saying is really outrageous, and they don't want to be a part of it. And Leon Panetta, to his great credit, stood up for his people. And he wants to look forward. But if our Democratic friends want to keep looking backward, accuse Bush and Cheney of being criminals or unethical, we're going to look at everybody. We're going to look at what everybody knew and when they knew it. We're not going to let them have their cake and eat it, too.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: What about the CIA? Are we going to look at the CIA at all?
SEN. GRAHAM: Sure. Like Peter said, they made mistakes, but they're honorable, good people. They can be made better. Leon Panetta's a good guy. We haven't been attacked since September 11th, 2001.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: That's good news.
SEN. GRAHAM: And you know what? But one of the reasons we haven't is we've changed our laws, we're on offense, and that's what we should have been. We've been looking at this as a criminal endeavor until we were attacked September 11th. Bush sees these people as a military threat, and we're going after them. And I'm glad the president of the United States, President Obama, is going to restart military trials. And I hope he will, you know, change our interrogation policy.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: Quick question. You took on some Ron Paul people this weekend.
SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah. Ron Paul has a place in our party, but he's not running the party. He's the guy that stood up in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and said that Bush illegally invaded Iraq and that we brought 9/11 upon ourselves. So no, he's not the leader of my party. He's welcome to be in it, but they're not going to lead it.
MS. VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Nice to see you, as always, Senator.
SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you.
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