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American Morning

White House Taking Numerous Hits on Prewar Iraqi Intelligence

Aired July 21, 2003 - 09:34   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.


BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: For the White House, the debate about dubious intelligence in the State of the Union Address bringing significant political consequences. President Bush's job approval ratings, they're still high but the numbers dropped noticeably over the past 14 days. So, then, what kind of defense or offense is the White House offering? How is it playing in the media?
Our senior analyst Jeff Greenfield is here this morning on a Monday morning here on AMERICAN MORNING. Nice to see you, Jeff. Good morning to you. Is there one message, one overriding theme that the White House is trying to project out there?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: I think so. And I think it's the same one we've been for hearing several days which is to keep your eye on the bigger picture, the war on terror, progress in Iraq. Paul Bremer, the U.S. official who's in charge of Iraqi reconstruction, hit the Sunday talk shows. And that was at the heart of what he said. Here, for example, is what he said on "Face The Nation."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL BREWER, IRAQI RECONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATOR: I think it's important to step back a little bit here, Bob, and look at where we've come from. First of all, in the last three months, we have liberated 25 million people in Iraq. We are succeeding in education, we are succeeding bringing up the police, we are succeeding bringing up the economy...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Now House Speaker Dennis Hastert on "Meet the Press" put his bigger picture in a different frame and that is the September 11 massacre. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R-IL), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We lost 3,000 people within about an hour's time. And what we did -- and I'm talking on a bipartisan basis in the Congress and with the president -- said, basically made a vow that we weren't going to let that happen in this country again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: You see what I'm getting at. The bigger picture, the bigger picture. Don't fret this intelligence controversy so much. HEMMER: In the meanwhile, you have about a dozen Democratic candidates who want the job of the president and they are fighting mad in a lot of corners. But the White House is not going to sit back. Republicans aren't going to sit back. I think they call it a "pushback" sometimes in politics.

GREENFIELD: Yes. We already saw that last week on the Senate floor. And, again, Speaker Hastert provided that pushback, which is, I guess, the cliche of the moment on "Fox News Sunday." Here's what he had to say about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HASTERT: They all want to be president, they want his job. And so it's they're job from here on out, and you'll see a lot of this, it's to try to hurt the credibility of the president, to throw mud and see what sticks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Now, the problem with this attack is that at least some Republicans in the Senate say, Look, this is a serious matter. For instance, on CNN's "LATE EDITION," Nebraska's Chuck Hagel, one of the most skeptical Republicans about the whole idea of going to war. is praising the idea of a Senate inquiry. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN CHUCK HAGEL (R), NEBRASKA: Chairman Roberts, Vice Chairman Rockefeller are handling this exactly right. They're coming at it from a bipartisan way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: The more the Republicans sign on to the idea that this a serious matter, the harder it is for the Bush White Houses to say it's just politics.

HEMMER: Yes. Now in London we're seeing this battle between Tony Blair's government and the BBC. What are we seeing back in this country about perhaps the media, reports on Iraq, et cetera?

GREENFIELD: Well, last week, it was an ABC News reporter, Jeffrey Kaufman, who reported on what he called "plummeting morale in Iraq." Apparently somebody at the White House told Web journalist Matt Drudge that Kaufman was, A: gay, and, B: Canadian, which echoes what the Johnson White House did to Morley Safer after he started reporting in Vietnam.

Interestingly enough, Matt Drudge blew the whistle on the White House, told "The Washington Post" about this effort and the White House press spokesman said, If anybody in our shop did that, they'll be out of a job.

But I think more seriously, you're going to be seeing a series of dueling news stories from Iraq reporting great progress or great difficulty. And I don't we're likely to know the picture story for months. I've made this point here before, but I think in this case, repetition is worth doing.

The news from Iraq will determine how much power the story about questionable intelligence has, because the better or worse things are there, the smaller or bigger the story of how we got into that war will be.

HEMMER: And now we're already hearing warning signs going out, the more progress the U.S. makes on the ground, the more attacks you can expect, and anticipate, from those who do not want to see this succeed.

GREENFIELD: I think we're already seeing one interesting thing. I think people are going to start going back to post-World War II Europe and asking questions of how smoothly the occupation of Germany and Japan and the reconstruction of Western Europe went.

HEMMER: It took years.

GREENFIELD: Yes. Because patience is probably not an American virtue when it comes to struggles and combat, post-combat.

HEMMER: You don't think?

GREENFIELD: We are a very impatient people.

HEMMER: Thanks, Jeff. See you a bit later.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com




Intelligence>


Aired July 21, 2003 - 09:34   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: For the White House, the debate about dubious intelligence in the State of the Union Address bringing significant political consequences. President Bush's job approval ratings, they're still high but the numbers dropped noticeably over the past 14 days. So, then, what kind of defense or offense is the White House offering? How is it playing in the media?
Our senior analyst Jeff Greenfield is here this morning on a Monday morning here on AMERICAN MORNING. Nice to see you, Jeff. Good morning to you. Is there one message, one overriding theme that the White House is trying to project out there?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: I think so. And I think it's the same one we've been for hearing several days which is to keep your eye on the bigger picture, the war on terror, progress in Iraq. Paul Bremer, the U.S. official who's in charge of Iraqi reconstruction, hit the Sunday talk shows. And that was at the heart of what he said. Here, for example, is what he said on "Face The Nation."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL BREWER, IRAQI RECONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATOR: I think it's important to step back a little bit here, Bob, and look at where we've come from. First of all, in the last three months, we have liberated 25 million people in Iraq. We are succeeding in education, we are succeeding bringing up the police, we are succeeding bringing up the economy...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Now House Speaker Dennis Hastert on "Meet the Press" put his bigger picture in a different frame and that is the September 11 massacre. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R-IL), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We lost 3,000 people within about an hour's time. And what we did -- and I'm talking on a bipartisan basis in the Congress and with the president -- said, basically made a vow that we weren't going to let that happen in this country again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: You see what I'm getting at. The bigger picture, the bigger picture. Don't fret this intelligence controversy so much. HEMMER: In the meanwhile, you have about a dozen Democratic candidates who want the job of the president and they are fighting mad in a lot of corners. But the White House is not going to sit back. Republicans aren't going to sit back. I think they call it a "pushback" sometimes in politics.

GREENFIELD: Yes. We already saw that last week on the Senate floor. And, again, Speaker Hastert provided that pushback, which is, I guess, the cliche of the moment on "Fox News Sunday." Here's what he had to say about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HASTERT: They all want to be president, they want his job. And so it's they're job from here on out, and you'll see a lot of this, it's to try to hurt the credibility of the president, to throw mud and see what sticks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Now, the problem with this attack is that at least some Republicans in the Senate say, Look, this is a serious matter. For instance, on CNN's "LATE EDITION," Nebraska's Chuck Hagel, one of the most skeptical Republicans about the whole idea of going to war. is praising the idea of a Senate inquiry. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN CHUCK HAGEL (R), NEBRASKA: Chairman Roberts, Vice Chairman Rockefeller are handling this exactly right. They're coming at it from a bipartisan way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: The more the Republicans sign on to the idea that this a serious matter, the harder it is for the Bush White Houses to say it's just politics.

HEMMER: Yes. Now in London we're seeing this battle between Tony Blair's government and the BBC. What are we seeing back in this country about perhaps the media, reports on Iraq, et cetera?

GREENFIELD: Well, last week, it was an ABC News reporter, Jeffrey Kaufman, who reported on what he called "plummeting morale in Iraq." Apparently somebody at the White House told Web journalist Matt Drudge that Kaufman was, A: gay, and, B: Canadian, which echoes what the Johnson White House did to Morley Safer after he started reporting in Vietnam.

Interestingly enough, Matt Drudge blew the whistle on the White House, told "The Washington Post" about this effort and the White House press spokesman said, If anybody in our shop did that, they'll be out of a job.

But I think more seriously, you're going to be seeing a series of dueling news stories from Iraq reporting great progress or great difficulty. And I don't we're likely to know the picture story for months. I've made this point here before, but I think in this case, repetition is worth doing.

The news from Iraq will determine how much power the story about questionable intelligence has, because the better or worse things are there, the smaller or bigger the story of how we got into that war will be.

HEMMER: And now we're already hearing warning signs going out, the more progress the U.S. makes on the ground, the more attacks you can expect, and anticipate, from those who do not want to see this succeed.

GREENFIELD: I think we're already seeing one interesting thing. I think people are going to start going back to post-World War II Europe and asking questions of how smoothly the occupation of Germany and Japan and the reconstruction of Western Europe went.

HEMMER: It took years.

GREENFIELD: Yes. Because patience is probably not an American virtue when it comes to struggles and combat, post-combat.

HEMMER: You don't think?

GREENFIELD: We are a very impatient people.

HEMMER: Thanks, Jeff. See you a bit later.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com




Intelligence>