Yes, I just found the transcript wherein the White House HoHo is at it again. She says:
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, the president believes that he had very good intelligence going into the war, and stands behind what the director of Central Intelligence told him going into the war.( AND WE KNOW Bush couldn't make that crock stick on Tenet and finally took the blame for putting, er, reading false claims about Iraq in his SOTU)
Obviously, this was the accumulation of evidence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction over a 12-year period, information that was relied on by three administrations, several different intelligence services and indeed the United Nations itself.
I think the way to put this, Tony, is that there was enrichment of the intelligence from 1998 over the period leading up to the war. And nothing pointed to a reversal of Saddam Hussein's very active efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, to have very good programs in weapons of mass destruction. It was very clear that this had continued and that it was a gathering danger.
SNOW: It's well documented that all the world's intelligence services were skeptical of them. And it's also documented that President Clinton had gotten an authorization to take action about Saddam. But, again, the question, you say an enrichment of information, does that mean new information?
RICE: Yes, about his procurement networks, information about efforts that he was making to reconstitute groups of scientists that worked for him. Yes, I think I would call it new information.
And it was certainly enriching the case in the same direction that this is somebody who had had weapons of mass destruction, had used them, and was continuing to pursue them.
SNOW: But there was no intelligence that, "here's a weapon of mass destruction here, here's a nuclear program there." It was all conjectural?
RICE: Well, conjecture is not the right word for it. There were many, many dots about what was going on in the Iraqi programs after 1998. Obviously, after the inspectors were kicked out, one source of information about his programs was lost. But that was all the more troubling, because if you really did believe that somehow after he kicked the inspectors out he started to reverse his programs of weapons of mass destruction, I just don't think that that was plausible.
SNOW: David Kay, former weapons inspector, now has been in Iraq looking for these things. He's piled up a lot of documentation. He will be giving a classified report to Congress next week.
Why not put out a declassified version, scrub out the names, scrub out the stuff in terms of sensitive intelligence, provide a declassified report, so the American people, many of who are growing skeptical of the war, of weapons of mass destruction and so on, can get a pretty accurate feel for what's going on in terms for the hunt for these weapons?
RICE: Well, David Kay's report, of course, it's only going to be a progress report and is likely not to draw any major conclusions because it's a progress report. But we will make known his conclusions; we will make known his findings.
SNOW: Next week?
RICE: Soon after he does report, because we want the American people to know the progress that he's making.
But I just want to emphasize, he's got a very long way still to go. He's still got miles of documentation to go through. He still has many, many people to interview. But we want the American people to know what he's finding thus far.
BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS: Do you yet know what the general thrust of what he's going to report is?
RICE: Brit, I've not seen the report. And I suspect that when we see it, we're going to learn that there's, as I said, that there's a long way to go.
And the one thing that the president has told him is not to rush his analysis, to work it through. This was a program that was built for concealment over a very long period of time. This is a program in which many people are still somewhat fearful for what could happen to them if they disclose information.
But every day David Kay says he's getting better information. He's going to put together a full picture of the status of the programs and what became of the weapons of mass destruction.
HUME: And we take it from what you're saying that he's not going to point to actual discovery of weapons of mass destruction at this stage?
SNOW: I think it's far too early to draw conclusions about what he is or is not going to say. As I've said, I have not seen the report. And we want him to report the findings that he thinks are now appropriate to report. But, again, it has to be kept in the context of a progress report.
SNOW: You mentioned that there's some fear on the part of people to come forward that is melting away. Do you believe that life can be normalized in Iraq without having found, located, captured Saddam Hussein?
RICE: Life can become more normal, absolutely. And it's becoming more normal every day. It was a tremendous help to capture — to kill the funds. That was clearly a big help. And every day the Baathists are being rounded up, and people are giving us more intelligence. So, clearly, things are opening up. People are feeling better about the circumstances.
But, certainly, it would be a good thing to get Saddam Hussein.
SNOW: Is it not true that there's still some scientists who may have been involved in the program who are afraid to speak out because they're afraid that Saddam or people around him will try to get retribution?
RICE: The one thing that you cannot underestimate is what happens to people's mentality in circumstances like this. This has been an incredibly repressive government in which people's tongues were ripped out for speaking the truth. So, of course, people are still concerned.
But every day, life is getting to be more normal. Every day, people know that Saddam Hussein and his henchmen are not coming back. And the more progress that we make in Iraq, and the more that Iraqis are involved in their own future, as they are increasingly, the Iraqis are going to know that they've truly turned a new page and Saddam Hussein is not coming back.
SNOW: Let me ask about press coverage of Iraq. It generally has fallen into the quagmire category. You're the person — Brit did a wonderful interview with the president last week, and the president said that he gets his news — he scans the newspapers and so on, but he gets his information primarily from you.
Does anybody brief the president on what's appearing in the mainstream press when it comes to the reporting on Iraq?
RICE: Of course. We talk about what's appearing in the mainstream press, and we also talk about the considerable divide between what's appearing in the mainstream press and what's actually going on in Iraq.
Because anyone who goes to Iraq — congressional delegations, journalists who spend a good deal of time there, people who have gone and come back — a number of people, like former police chief from New York, Bernie Kerik, has come back from service there. Peter McPherson came back from doing economic work there. And they give a very different story of what's going on in Iraq, of progress being made every day, of life getting back to normal, of course of challenges remaining.
But the stories of Iraqi businesses coming back, of more than 60,000 Iraqis now involved in their own security; of the Governing Council working and the ministers working. We had the ministers of electricity and public works here last week.
And, yes, they know that it's a challenge. But when you consider the short period of time in which we've been there, for what is going to be a major reconstruction, there are very, very good stories about the progress that is being made.
HUME: Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was asked to inquire in Africa about what Saddam Hussein might have been doing there in terms of acquiring nuclear materials, ended up with his wife's name in the paper as a CIA person. There are now suggestions that the name and her identity and her CIA work had been revealed by the White House. What do you know about that?
RICE: I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate.
My understanding is that, in matters like this, as a matter of routine, a question like this is referred to the Justice Department for appropriate action, and that's what's going to be done.
SNOW: Well, when the story came out — his wife's name is in the paper — was it known in the White House that she was a CIA employee?
RICE: I'm not going to go into this, Tony, because the problem here is this has been referred to the Justice Department. I think that's the appropriate place...
SNOW: Well, but it is revealing, or it's important to figure out what the White House reaction was at the time. For years and years and years, for instance, the administrations chased Phillip Agee all around the globe because he had revealed the name of a CIA officer. This is a grave offense, if you have CIA officers.
Was there, at least within the White House, a gasp when somebody said, "Uh oh"? And if so, did the White House take any action, back then in June, when the story appeared?
RICE: Well, it was well known that the president of the United States does not expect the White House to get involved in such things. We will see...
HUME: You mean the revelation of names?
RICE: Anything of this kind. But let's just see what the Justice Department does. It's with the appropriate channels now, and we'll see what the Justice Department — how the Justice Department disposes of it.
SNOW: But there was nobody at the White House at the time who was saying, "Oh, we've got a problem here"?
RICE: Tony, I don't remember any such conversation. But I will say this: The Justice Department gets these things as a matter of routine. They will determine the facts. They will determine what happened, they will determine if anything happened. And they'll take appropriate action.
SNOW: Do you think the White House should release phone logs, if necessary, to figure out who talked to whom?
RICE: Tony, as a matter of course, when the Justice Department is looking into something, of course the White House cooperates.
SNOW: All right, let's talk about the war on terror. The president speaking yesterday with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
Are the Russians going to help us out?
RICE: The Russians are being very constructive. They're constructive in New York, in discussions about the U.N. resolution. They were — President Putin was constructive in his discussions with the president. He talked about the need not to allow a vacuum to develop in Iraq. He talked about the need to have a stable Iraq.
And I think the Russians will look for ways to help. They want to continue to work on the U.N. Security Council resolution right now to see what the parameters of that are going to be.
But I think that the Russians understand, like many countries with whom the president talked when he was in New York, that we are in a situation in which, whatever your thoughts were going into the war, the goal now for the entire world has to be a stable, secure and democratizing Iraq.
HUME: Let's talk a little bit about the very public reconciliation — what looked like a reconciliation between the president and German Chancellor Schroeder this week at the U.N. meetings. How did that come about?
RICE: For some time now, the Germans have been reaching out. We've, of course, reached out to them. Much of the conversation began around Afghanistan, about the Germans' very helpful desire to expand the International Security Assistance Force, to take over one of the provincial reconstruction teams.
They made it clear — I believe Chancellor Schroeder actually had a piece in The New York Times making it clear that, even if he had disagreed with the decision to go to war, he now believed that stability and democracy in Iraq were in the interest of the entire civilized world.
It's just been a very good process of working with the Germans on practical matters and beginning to move forward.
HUME: Was that in-person conversation this week the first time the president has spoken to Chancellor Schroeder since the original U.N. votes on Iraq?
RICE: No, he's spoken to him on the phone a couple of times since then, saw him briefly at the G-8...
HUME: Right.
RICE: ... in Evian, but it's the first extended conversation that they've had.
HUME: One other thing on that. How much, in your view, did the Germans' posture have to do with the statement by Jacques Chirac that he did not intend to veto a U.N. resolution on Iraq?
RICE: I really don't know the internal deliberations between the Germans and the French on this matter, but I do think that everyone is saying, and perhaps saying even to the French, that it's time to move on. And it's helpful that people are talking about how we can now build a stable Iraq, how we can build a democratizing Iraq.
Look, the president took a very bold and decisive action. Everybody knows that the world is much better off with Saddam Hussein gone. Nobody wants to argue that we would have been better off to leave him in place.
Given that this brutal dictator is gone, this man who used weapons of mass destruction at Halabjah, in really one of the great crimes against humanity in this century — given that this man who's invaded his neighbors and sits in the middle of the Middle East is gone, I think we're starting to see people come on board to say, "It was a good thing that he was removed, and now let's move on to make it work."
HUME: There was a lot of reporting in the immediate aftermath of the president's speech to the U.N. that the speech had more or less laid an egg and had failed to warm the relationship between the president and many at the U.N. Why should Americans not believe that that was the case?
RICE: Because the meetings that the president had with his counterparts could not have been more constructive and warmer. They could not have been more supportive of moving forward and doing what we need to do for the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is now a joint project of the international community. The president has said, and I think people agree, that if you have a stable Iraq, you have a linchpin for a change to Middle East. And it is well understood that we cannot continue to see the status quo in the Middle East, if we're going to be secure, if Europe is going to be secure. And I think people are rallying around that point of view.
SNOW: Dr. Rice, there have been some detentions and arrests at Guantanamo Bay — Muslim clerics and others. Apparently, there has been communication between some of these folks and Syria. Is the government of Syria engaged in espionage against the United States?
RICE: Tony, obviously, since these are matters that are now under investigation, I don't want to comment on this. And we're looking into it, and we'll see what's there.
SNOW: Do you fear that there is? I mean, do you have some reason to believe that the Syrians are for us or against us? Or, let me change it.
RICE: Yes?
SNOW: Are we working more closely and constructively with the Syrians than we were before?
RICE: We are not working as constructively with the Syrians as we need to. The Syrians were given a very strong message by Secretary Powell several months ago. They did respond in cutting off access for Iraqi leadership officials who were trying to leave the country. But there is much more that Syria needs to do, and that message is being communicated to them.
SNOW: All right, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, thanks for joining us.
RICE: Thank you very much. |
