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Congressional Clamor Over What President Knew About Risk of Terrorist Hijackings Before 09-11

Aired May 17, 2002 - 09:03   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Up front this morning congressional clamor over just what the President knew about the risk of terrorist hijackings before September 11th. For the latest in what's going on, on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, let's go to CNN's Senior White House Correspondent, John King, who joins us from the White House lawn today. Good morning John.

JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Paula. A little more than a day now; a little more than a full day since we first learned about that briefing the President received back in August, about the possibility - considered remote a the time - but the possibility of an al Qaida hijacking plot. As this has played out, it is proceeding if you will on two tracks. On one, there is the policy track. And even the White House concedes very legitimate questions.

Exactly, what did the President know; what did the FBI know; what did the CIA know before the September 11th attacks. And what did the Government do about it? Included in that debate, now, this briefing to the President. He was told there could be an al Qaida hijacking plot; what did he do to act on that information? Now the Administration says, even before that, it had put out general warnings to the airlines that there could be hijackings. But some of the airlines are saying that information was so vague, they had no way of acting on it in any way, to actually know what to do or to improve security. So that will be part of the debate.

The White House though, also suggesting as you know that it senses a bit of politics here. President Bush went up to Capitol Hill yesterday smiling in public, said nothing about this in public. But we are told, behind closed doors he told Senate Republicans there was a, quote, "sniff of politics in the air." That he believed Democrats were taking advantage to suggest in public that perhaps he knew enough to do something about the attacks. Vice President Cheney directly addressing that point last night, cautioning the Democrats not to play politics with this issue.

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VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Basically, what I want to say to my Democratic friends in the Congress is that they need to be very cautious, not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions, as were made by some today that the White House had advanced information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11.

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KING: So this is both complicated and sensitive and it will go on for weeks if not months. A number of congressional inquiries now planned about this. And again, the White House says some of these questions are quite legitimate: what did the Government know, what did they do about that information? Did the agency share information? Early answers to some of those questions are known, perhaps the agencies should have shared that information. But Paula, we also are told this morning, the President, who we have not heard from directly on this yet, is furious that some Democrats in public are saying that he had enough information to at least try to do something.

ZAHN: All right, John King, thanks so much. And while Congressional Democrats are raising the possibility that some of these clues were missed, and might have prevented the events of September 11th, they are pushing for that investigation. What do you think the Republicans are saying about that?

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UNKNOWN MALE: I'm gravely concerned, about the information provided us, just yesterday that the President received a warning in August about the threat of hijackers by Usama bin Laden and his organization, we shouldn't jump to any conclusions, Clearly there is a lot more to be learned before we can come to any final conclusion about all of the facts. But it clearly raises some very important questions that have to be asked, and have to be answered.

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ZAHN: And joining us now from Washington, to give us his party's reaction, Florida Republican congressman Porter Goss, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Good morning, sir, thanks for joining us.

PORTER GOSS, CHAIRMAN, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Happy to be here, thank you.

ZAHN: So you heard what Tom Daschle had to say. Reprsentative Gephardt was a guest on our show earlier this morning, and he said this is not about playing the blame game, this is trying to figure out what went wrong in every single branch of the government. Is it possible to ask these kinds of questions with out being accused of being on a partisan witchhunt here?

GOSS: Well actually, we have a joint bi-partisan, bi-cameral committee that is doing a very fine job of the investigation. In fact some of the material that we are talking about today that was leaked out comes out of that committee. The leak was not from our committee, it was from other sources. Apparently, for reasons that I don't particularly understand, but who knows about motives in this town. The facts are simply this. We are asking those questions; we are getting the information. And we have been asked to do that by the Senate and by the House of Representatives.

Mr. Gephardt is a member, ex-officio, of our Intelligence Committee, and all the information that the White House have, we have in the Intelligence Committee, and it is of course available to Mr. Gephardt. The fact that we also have an investigation on a bi- partisan basis is working very well, seems to have come into some question yesterday. I'm not sure why. I don't know that there is anything more that we can do that we should be doing, professionally. Some are getting impatient and obviously the leak of the information, which is really nothing new, nothing that we didn't already have, has caused a firestorm in the media. And I don't think the media has been entirely responsible.

I think the way some of the people have jumped on this issue, it obviously has been political, and there are other motives, too. Some people say it is a justification to start a whole new series of investigations. It might be a good idea to let us finish our investigation. We have both the Senate and the House, and both parties involved in it, and a lot of professional staff and a lot of professional people, the full cooperation of the White House.

And I will tell the American people, dead on, there is no smoking gun that says with any specificity at all about time, date, place, or method that is known. If there is such a smoking gun, we will find it and share it with the American people. There is no such now and the White House does not have one.

ZAHN: Well let me go back to something you said a little earlier about, you're not sure what the motivation was for whoever leaked this information that your committee had. The question, I guess, a lot of people in the public - some of your constituents are posing - is why the Administration didn't confirm this until yesterday. And let me put up on the screen some of the information, the latest CNN- USA Today-Gallop Poll where the question was asked. "Do you think the Bush Administration should or should not have discussed that fact before now, that it had this information prior to September 17th. 68 percent said yes, 29 percent said, no.

Even though you have made it very clear that you don't think there is a smoking gun here, do you think the fact that the Administration didn't go public with this earlier, does leave them open to the charge that something was being hidden here?

GOSS: I think that on the information that we know of so far, there was no justification for taking warnings beyond the warnings that the Administration took with the proper authorities. We had actually several warnings going out. If you may recall, we closed some embassies, we sent some ships to sea, we did a lot of different things in response to warnings. Now the question is, because of some sensationalism and spin, the depiction of the actual information that the President had is a little different from what the facts actually show.

And my view is, that the right level of warning was given. I think, even Senator Graham of the other party, my colleague and friend and a very responsible leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said publicly that he didn't feel there was any justification for doing anything other than what they did. I certainly don't feel that. I don't know what we would have warned.

ZAHN: All right, let's talk more about the timing of this. Here is what Senator Hillary Clinton had to say about this revelation yesterday. Let's listen.

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SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON: As for the President, he may not be in a position at this time to respond to all of those concerned. But he is in a position to answer some of them, including the question of why we know today, May 16th, about the warnings he received. Why did we not know this on April 16th, or March 16th, or February, or January 16th - or August 16th of last year.

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ZAHN: Representative Goss, is this all about, in your judgement, politics. Or, can you tell us this morning whether you on your committee were privy to any of the briefings that came out on those dates that Senator Clinton just set forward?

GOSS: I think Senator Clinton is being a little disingenuous there. She certainly had access to the information if she wanted to. As a matter of fact, I have reviewed the records in the House Intelligence Committee - and I think there is similar information available in the Senate side which members of the Senate are entitled - that show that we actually had testimony that revealed to us the substance of the leaked information that was so widely heralded yesterday. That information, was testified to and presented to one of our subcommittees that is doing a report on terrorism, which will be released in June, I believe.

ZAHN: All right, final question for you, Representative Goss, if you made it quite clear that this information was available and even when you read it and your colleagues read it, it didn't set off any red flags, does that mean, then, the blame should go everywhere here - from the Executive Branch to the Legislative Branch?

GOSS: I would - you know what might be a great idea? Why don't we wait and see what the facts reveal, before we start pointing fingers? Why don't we let this good, honest, forthright, investigation being done by honorable, qualified people take place in a calm and relaxed atmosphere. And get the job done and then bring the facts to the American public. I am sure that, that is our intent. We are going to pursue on that, despite these distractions. And I would suggest that the only thing this kind of uproar does is give aid and comfort to the enemy. And I don't think there is anybody that wants to give aid and comfort to the terrorists.

ZAHN: And speaking of the enemy, do you believe bin Laden is still alive?

GOSS: What I believe about that is probably not worth the answer for you, but I do believe he is still alive. ZAHN: And probably in Pakistan someplace?

GOSS: I would guess that; but I have no information. That's intuition; it's because I haven't seen any evidence that would lead me otherwise.

ZAHN: All right, Representative Porter Goss, thank you for dropping by. Always good to see you on "AMERICAN MORNING".

GOSS: Thanks.

ZAHN: Good luck with your investigation.

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