CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer - Transcript

CNN

SHOW: CNN LATE EDITION WITH WOLF BLITZER 12:00

March 28, 2004 Sunday

HEADLINE: Interview With Richard Clarke; Interview With Thomas Kean, Lee Hamilton

GUESTS: Richard Clarke, Richard Perle, Ron Brownstein, John Fund, Ed Markey, Christopher Shays, Thomas Kean, Lee Hamilton, Stephen Push, Carrie Lemack

BYLINE: Judy Woodruff, Dana Bash, Bruce Morton

HIGHLIGHT:
Interviews with Richard Clarke, Thomas Kean, Lee Hamilton.

BODY:
WOODRUFF: 9/11 Commission hearings and new information about missed warnings, lost opportunities, all raise new questions about what lessons have been learned.

Two members of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security have some answers. Congressman Chris Shays is a Republican from Connecticut. He joins us now from New Haven. And Congressman Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, joins us from his home state.

Congressman Markey, to you first. Is Richard Clarke credible when he says this administration did not do enough to prevent 9/11 from happening?

REP. ED MARKEY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I think you have to give great weight to someone who was the first President Bush's counterterrorism chief, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton and this administration's. I mean, this is someone with a high degree of credibility.

He is somebody who obviously now feels remorse about the lack of action that was taken, but I think that we are about to learn a lot about what happened. And these lessons are going to be critical for the future, in order to prevent any future disaster.

So, I think, like Ambassador Joe Wilson who has come forward, like the Department of Energy officials who have told us that the aluminum tubing in Iraq could not have been used to enrich uranium, that we're learning a lot about what the administration knew before the war in Iraq and before September 11th.

And all of this is going to create a picture which, in my opinion, is going to be a huge public service. This man publicly has apologized to the American public, and I can't remember the last public servant who has done that.

WOODRUFF: Congressman Shays, are we learning a lot, and is Richard Clarke credible?

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS ®, CONNECTICUT: Well, I mean, he is accurate to say that this administration didn't do enough. He is inaccurate when he suggests that the previous administration did.

He's really trying to rewrite history. He was the counterterrorist czar for nine years. He never had an assessment of the terrorist threat. He never had a strategy to deal with the terrorist threat. And we as a government never reorganized until after 9/11.

I know this for a fact, because we had 20 hearings on the terrorist threat before 9/11 in my committee on national security, and when he came before our committee, he said it would be silly to have a threat-we know who the bad guys are, and we just hunt them down.

That flies in the face of three commissions that came before us: Bremer, Hart-Rudman, Gaylmar (ph) commission. They all said we need to have an assessment of the threat, we need to have a strategy, and then we need to reorganize our government.

He was in charge.

WOODRUFF: Let me turn from that, or maybe add to that, and ask Congressman Markey about the new information now coming forward that perhaps Richard Clarke said something very different when he testified before the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee, back in 2002. There's now been a call for that testimony to be made public. Mr. Clarke says he's willing for that to happen.

Is it possible that Richard Clarke could have perjured himself, Congressman Markey?

MARKEY: I heard Richard Clarke say that he wants all that information to be declassified, he wants it out in the public domain. But he also wants everything that Condoleezza Rice was writing at the time, and everyone else that was advising the president.

He's right. It's important for the American public to know what was going on back in that early part of this administration. And there's no national security danger now in letting the public know what happened.

It's important for Condoleezza Rice to testify in public. She's testified in private, so it's not a question of executive privilege. She's already agreed that she will testify. It's only that she doesn't want to testify in public, she doesn't want her documents declassified.

So let's take Richard Clarke's challenge: All of his stuff gets declassified if everything that Condoleezza Rice and all of the other national security advisers of President Bush is declassified as well.

WOODRUFF: Congressman Shays, Richard Clarke also said today that he's been told that the White House wants to make sure-that someone at the White House said they want to make sure that he never earns another dime in Washington.

SHAYS: You know what?

WOODRUFF: Has this whole thing gotten carried away?

SHAYS: Well, I mean, with all due respect, Richard Clarke has put a knife in the back of the president. So, in terms of being personal, I think it's somewhat personal.

Is there someone in the White House who probably said something dumb like that? Absolutely.

Do I think Condoleezza Rice is going to testify in public? I'm absolutely convinced she will. It's been one of the stupidest things this White House has done, to resist the 9/11 Commission, and then to not let her...

WOODRUFF: You're convinced that she will testify?

SHAYS: Oh, absolutely. She has to testify. I mean, if she's going to go out in front of the press and testify, and then say she can't come before Congress, or can't go before this commission, that's just foolish.

WOODRUFF: Congressman Markey, I want to turn to one of the central points that Richard Clarke is making, and that is the effort, the energy, the money this administration has spent to fight the war in Iraq, money that he says should have gone to pay for homeland security, for fire and police personnel here at home.

You and Congressman Shays and members of that committee are in a position to know. Is there truth to what he says about that?

MARKEY: I think his central point is correct, that there was an immediate obsession with Iraq.

And that's why Condoleezza Rice's testimony will be so important. If she can go on "60 Minutes" and talk to a network, she should go before this independent commission in public for 60 minutes and give the public the answers, as well, under oath.

So since that time, however, while there has been a blank check which has been given to fight the war in Iraq, this administration has been nickel-and-diming homeland security. We still don't have the funding for our first responders in the cities and towns across our country. We still don't have the funding to screen all of the cargo which goes onto passenger planes. We still don't have all the security around chemical, rail, subway or nuclear facilities in our country, which we need.

Every recommendation from commissions has made it clear that we need much more funding. And yet, the administration has short-changed that security here at home while, again, allowing for an unlimited amount of money to be spent in Iraq.

WOODRUFF: Congressman Shays, do you agree that the administration has had its priorities all wrong here?

SHAYS: Oh, absolutely not. Saddam was the snake in the bedroom. The very reason why Osama bin Laden attacked was our presence in Saudi Arabia. We were there because of Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The bottom line is we had to deal with that, and that's what we did do. We dealt with that. At the same time, we are giving out billions of dollars in homeland security funds, and all of that is proceeding.

Now, do I think we're safer today than we were before 9/11? Absolutely. Do we feel safer? No, because we had a false sense of security before 9/11.

WOODRUFF: Congressman Markey, there has not been another terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11, two and a half years ago. Doesn't the Bush administration deserve credit for that?

MARKEY: Without question, there has been a heightened sense of security here at home. I've pointed out some of the deficiencies that exist in protecting rail and chemical and nuclear and other facilities, and giving more help at the hometown level.

But let's not kid ourselves. We were warned, if we attacked Iraq and we found no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, that we would create a furor in the rest of the Arab world. And President Mubarak warned us that we would create 100 bin Ladens if we went in there and it turned out that we were wrong.

And that, I'm afraid, is the case-that is, that we have created more terrorists. So we have more protection at home, but unfortunately, I'm afraid, because of the war in Iraq, we now have more terrorists to protect ourselves against.

SHAYS: We created more terrorists because our failure to respond during the Clinton administration to so many terrorist attacks, even, frankly, before, under the Reagan administration and so on. We left for 20 years these terrorists to do their thing. Finally, we're standing up to them.

I mean, 9/11 was an horrific attack. Did they love us then and all of a sudden they started hating us afterwards? That's absurd.

MARKEY: Well, let's give credit to President Clinton. When he attempted to assassinate Osama bin Laden, he was attacked by the entire Republican leadership for wagging the dog. And so, the Republicans attacked him when he attempted to assassinate Osama bin Laden six years ago, saying that it was just a political act by President Clinton.

So let's get the history straight here, in terms of actually where this war against Osama began.

SHAYS: No, I think the bombing of Iraq was wagging the dog. I don't think going after Osama bin Laden was.

WOODRUFF: All right, we are going to have to leave it there, gentlemen. We do appreciate your being with us. Congressman Chris Shays, Congressman Ed Markey, gentlemen, thank you both, both part of the committee on homeland security. We appreciate it.