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The Situation Room
Michael Brown Blames Others In Administration For Bungled Hurricane Katrina Response; White House Disputes "New York Times" Article Saying Their Response Was Delayed; Scooter Libby Authorized By Superiors To Talk To Reporters About Highly Classified Information; Paul Pillar Accuses Bush Administration Of Manipulating Pre-War Intelligence; House Republicans Meet On Maryland's Eastern Shore
Aired February 10, 2006 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks very much, Susan.
And to our viewers, you are in THE SITUATION ROOM, where new pictures and information from around the world are arriving all the time.
Happening now, it's 4:00 p.m. on Capitol Hill where the former FEMA chief relives the fury of Hurricane Katrina. Michael Brown says the scale of the disaster was clear from the start, and calls administration claims to the contrary -- and I'm quoting now -- just baloney.
It's 4:00 p.m. at the White House where Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's indicted former chief of staff, says he was authorized by his superiors to leak classified information. How big a problem is this potentially for the vice president?
And it's midnight in Baghdad. Did the Bush administration cherry-pick the intelligence it wanted to justify a decision to go to war? Strong accusations from the CIA's former point man for Middle East intelligence. I'll speak one on one with him here live in THE SITUATION ROOM.
I'm Wolf Blitzer and you are in THE SITUATION ROOM.
Former FEMA director Michael Brown sets off a storm of his own, telling a Senate committee that others in the Bush administration were to blame for the bungled response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Our White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux is standing by, but let's begin our coverage this hour with our homeland security correspondent, Jeanne Meserve -- Jeanne.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, it's clear Michael Brown is tired of taking the rap for the deeply flawed response to Hurricane Katrina. At the Senate hearing today, there was candor and confrontation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL BROWN, FORMER FEMA DIRECTOR: Senator, with all due respect, what do you want me to say? I have admitted to mistakes publicly, I have admitted to mistakes in hearings. What more, Senator Coleman, do you want from me?
SEN. NORM COLEMAN (R), MINNESOTA: Well, I think ...
BROWN: What do you want from me? I'm asking you. What do you want from me?
COLEMAN: Well, what I'm hearing today and what I heard from your testimony is coming in and talking about all these structural -- that the dye was cast. That was your testimony today. About the integration -- and by the way, I have my own questions about the integration of FEMA and DHS, but what I heard today from you that the dye was cast by ...
BROWN: It was.
COLEMAN: And what I'm saying, Mr. Brown, I'm saying that in fact, you know, leadership makes a difference. You didn't provide the leadership even with structural infirmities. Strong leadership can overcome that and clearly that wasn't the case here.
BROWN: Well, Senator, that's very easy for you to say sitting behind that dais and not being there in the middle of that disaster, watching that human suffering and watching those people dying, and trying to deal with those structural dysfunctionalties even within the federal government.
And I absolutely resent you sitting here saying that I lack the leadership to do that, because I was down there pushing everything that I could. I've admitted to those mistakes, and if you want something from me, put it on the table and you tell me what you want me to admit to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MESERVE: President Bush and Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff have said they weren't aware of the extent of the flooding in New Orleans until Tuesday, but Brown testified under oath that he spelled out the situation in phone conversations Monday with top White House officials and said it was "baloney" for Homeland Security officials to say they didn't know what was going on Monday because there had been a series of video teleconferences.
Brown testified that he was well aware of FEMA's shortcomings long before Katrina, but his efforts to improve preparedness had been futile because FEMA had been made a stepchild in the Department of Homeland Security and was doomed to failure -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Jeanne, I was struck that both Democrats and Republicans really took some swipes at Michael Brown today. Was that a surprise?
MESERVE: Not really, not on this committee. This has been an extraordinarily bipartisan effort there. You've had the chairman, Susan Collins of Maine, and the ranking Democrat, Joseph Lieberman, working hand in hand here. They have done an extraordinary number of interviews, collected hundreds of thousands of pages worth of documents. No, I wasn't at all surprised that this was a bipartisan approach today.
BLITZER: Thank you very much. Jeanne Meserve for that.
Let's head over to the White House where the reaction has been intense. Our White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux is standing by. What are they saying, Suzanne?
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, while the president, of course, went about his day business as usual, really behind the scenes it was public relations battle mode all the way.
White House aides are furious, not over Mike Brown's testimony -- they have not even really offered much reaction to that -- but rather to the "New York Times," an article they believe, they say, is inaccurate, sad, and even demoralizing specifically talking about when the White House knew of the levees failure.
That, of course, the "New York Times" saying that it happened the night of the storm. They say they didn't, and furthermore, also saying that the alert did not seem to register for the president.
Scott McClellan, in a gaggle earlier today, said "there were conflicting reports coming in, in the initial aftermath of the storm in regards to the levee system. Some were saying it was overtopped, some were saying it was breached. And again we knew of the flooding that was going on. That's why our top priority was focusing on saving lives. The cause of the flooding was secondary to that top priority and that's the way it should be."
We've heard from White House officials who essentially, Wolf, have outlined the kind of timetable they say early on, making sure that they said look, the president ordered that evacuation, talked to Governor Blanco on the phone Sunday evening, went out before the cameras, said that people should evacuate.
Of course, the White House had hoped to get ahead of this issue. They have their own investigation going on. Fran Townsend of the Homeland Security, an adviser to the president has, been working on that. And, Wolf, you can believe, they say that report is due out soon.
BLITZER: Suzanne Malveaux at the White House. Thank you, Suzanne, very much. We are going to have much more on this story coming up later this hour.
Let's move on to some other news we are following, specifically another storm swirling around the White House, this one involving intelligence leaks. Did vice president Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now under federal indictment, get the go ahead from his superiors to disclose classified information? And do the disclosures about those disclosures mean trouble potentially at least for the vice president himself? Let's go over to the White House. Our correspondent Dana Bash has been really reporting on this story. Dana, what are you picking up?
DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, you talk about the politics. I can tell you Democrats are already seizing on this as a political issue. This fundraising letter just out today from Senator John Kerry to his donors. The header, "Evidence Mounts Against Cheney," asking for money, talking about what he says the enough of the grip on power.
Here at the White House Republicans, as you can imagine, don't think that this is much of a political problem for them right now. But they do know that as this case against Scooter Libby moves forward, information like this is going to continue to drip out.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BASH (voice-over): At first glance, the revelation is startling. Scooter Libby was authorized by superiors to talk to reporters about highly classified information. And at least one of those superiors, a knowledgeable source tells CNN, was his boss, the vice president.
That may not be as surprising when you consider the political atmosphere in the summer of 2003. Several months after the Iraq invasion, no WMD had turned up and the White House was getting pounded for twisting intelligence for war.
As CNN reported at the time, the president and vice president attended strategy meetings with senior staff on how to rebut that criticism. According to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby set out to give reporters like Judy Miller of the "New York Times" information from the highly classified 2002 National Intelligence Estimate or NIE, which said in part, "Iraq will probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade."
JEFFREY SMITH, FORMER CIA GENERAL COUNSEL: One man's leak is another man's effort to get the truth out to the public.
BASH: Just ten days after Libby's conversation with Miller, the White House took their campaign public, held an off-camera briefing, and released eight out of 90 pages of the NIE to all reporters. Senior officials said that move was approved by the CIA.
It is unclear whether Libby's discussions with reporters were too. Experts say if authorized by the vice president, it would be a departure from regular procedure, but they probably didn't break the law. And in fact, the special prosecutor says he won't go after Libby for revealing classified information.
Legal or not, critics charge that Cheney authorizing the leak of classified information was inappropriate and some say hypocritical given his vocal public stance against leaking secrets, especially on the domestic surveillance program.
DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The existence of this program was highly classified and information about it was improperly provided to the news media to the clear detriment of our national security.
SMITH: Oftentimes policy makers leak information when it's favorable to them, and then scream bloody murder when something else leaks they don't like.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: This is not the first time the vice president has been the center -- at the center of a political storm over intelligence and secrecy. But, Wolf, it is important to note that nothing on the record so far suggests that the vice president had any role at all in what had been the heart of this investigation, which is the outing of the covert identity of Valerie Plame.
BLITZER: Dana Bash at the White House. Thank you very much. Good report.
Let's check in with Jack Cafferty. He's in New York now. He's watching this story as well -- Jack.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, this part of the Scooter Libby story really isn't about Scooter Libby at all. Libby is charged with perjury, obstruction of justice, making false statements to investigators who are looking into the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name.
And if he's convicted, Scooter Libby could spend a long time in prison. But as Dana just told us, the special prosecutor is not going after Libby for the release of classified information to the press. This part of the story is about who told Libby to do it, and perhaps, more importantly, who's authorized to declassify information vital to national security.
If the vice president turns out to be the man pulling Scooter Libby's strings on this, it will go a long way toward reinforcing a growing suspicion that when it comes to playing by the rules this administrations makes up its own.
Here is the question. What does it mean if Scooter Libby's superiors authorized him to leak classified information? Email us at caffertyfile@cnn.com or you can go to cnn.com/caffertyfile.
BLITZER: Thanks, Jack, very much.
Coming up here in THE SITUATION ROOM. Did the White House use and abuse pre-war intelligence? Powerful charges from the CIA's former point man for the Middle East. I will speak with that man, Paul Pillar. He is coming up next.
Plus, much more on the fallout over Hurricane Katrina. How damaging are Michael Brown's comments? I will ask James Carville and Bay Buchanan in today's strategy session.
Plus, did President Bush get a political bounce out of his State of the Union address? We have a new poll. And we are going to give you the result. All of that coming up here in THE SITUATION ROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: Welcome back.
Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq? It is a strong accusation that has been leveled often and denied just as often. This time, however, the charge comes directly from the CIA's former point man for the Middle East.
Our national security correspondent David Ensor has been looking into this story -- David.
DAVID ENSOR, NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, Paul Pillar only left government a matter of months ago where he was a very senior intelligence analyst. He says that the intelligence in the run up to the Iraq war was indeed misused.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ENSOR (voice-over): It was the central pillar in the argument for preemptive war.
CHENEY: Simply stated there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
ENSOR: The United States put its credibility on the line.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.
ENSOR: But much of that intelligence turned out to be wrong.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who is to blame? No question it is the intelligence community. We did it to ourselves.
ENSOR: That was the view endorsed by the president's Silberman- Robb Commission and by the president himself.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.
ENSOR: But now Paul Pillar, the former senior CIA analyst in charge of the Middle East, is swinging back charging the Bush administration used cherry-picking of intelligence to justify a decision for war it had already made. A view some less senior CIA veterans have already voiced.
MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER CIA ANALYST: There was just a resignation within the agency that we were going to war against Iraq and it didn't make any difference what the analysis was.
ENSOR: Most of the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and Iraq was flawed that Pillar admits. But he writes that the White House ignored CIA warnings before the invasion that a U.S. occupation force, quote, "would itself be the target of resentment and attacks, including by guerrilla warfare, unless it established security and put Iraq on the road to prosperity in the first few weeks or months after the fall of Saddam.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ENSOR: Since Pillar was quoted in a newspaper column some time back criticizing the Iraq war some administration officials have privately sought to present him to reporters as a long-time critic of various Bush policies.
But Pillar was a generally cautious intelligence analyst. He is well respected in and out of government -- Wolf.
BLITZER: David Ensor reporting.
David, thank you very much.
And as the CIA's national intelligence officer for the near east and South Asia, Paul Pillar was the point man for intelligence on Iraq until last year. His charge that the Bush administration politicized the data on Iraq appears in the journal, "Foreign Affairs." Paul Pillar is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University here in Washington.
He is joining us in THE SITUATION ROOM.
Mr. Pillar, thanks very much for joining us.
PAUL PILLAR, FORMER CIA OFFICIAL: How do you do?
BLITZER: Why now? Why have you decided to come out publicly with these very serious charges?
PILLAR: Because I am retired and I can speak more freely is the main reason.
BLITZER: And you feel that you have a responsibility to the American public is that what you are saying?
PILLAR: Yes, I think there is an important issue with regard to the whole relationship between intelligence and policy that hasn't been fully and freely debated in this country. I think it has had a greater airing, say, in Great Britain than it has here.
And I am the first to admit that I don't have a formula for changing, you know, this or that reorganization. I have made a few suggestions. But mostly we need to recognize that we have got a problem here. There is a lot of talk about fixing intelligence, but intelligence is only as good as it has an effect on policy. And so we have to look at that as well.
BLITZER: The most serious charge you make -- and I want you to explain this to our viewers -- is that the administration cherry- picked from the intelligence community. It highlighted what it wanted to hear to make the case for war, but it ignored other intelligence that undermined the case for war.
And the charge you are making is that they already made up their mind long before they got any intelligence that they were going to try to remove Saddam Hussein.
PILLAR: Well, that refers to the public case. And there have been a few celebrated issues like the uranium war from Africa and so on.
And any time you have a policy maker no matter the difference, no matter what the issue, taking individual pieces of raw intelligence and putting it out for public consumption without putting it in the context of a fully analyzed approach where you look at all of the reporting, the reporting that goes one way and the reporting that goes another way, you are inevitably going to have a bias.
And that is not, you know, unique to this administration or to this issue. But it really reverses the normal proper role between intelligence and policy making.
BLITZER: And you thought they made up their mind before they got the full picture?
PILLAR: It was pretty clear to just about anyone working in the national security community in 2002, probably fairly early in 2002, that is where we were headed.
BLITZER: Here is what the president said last year, February 13th almost exactly two years ago, he said, 2004, "I based my decision to go to war on the best intelligence possible, intelligence that had been gathered over the years, intelligence that not only our analysts thought was valid but analysts from other countries thought were valid. And I made a decision based upon that intelligence in the context of the war on terror." Was that an accurate statement?
PILLAR: A lot of people thought it was valid. There was a strong consensus not only here in the United States but overseas that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
And that makes the point that the difference in the policy decision to go to war as opposed to doing sanctions, doing inspections and so on was not just based on the intelligence but based on other objectives.
And quite clearly one of the main objectives, which is, you know, another source of debate, is using the toppling of Saddam Hussein to try to liberalize the Middle East.
BLITZER: That was one of the goals, but you were convinced and you were responsible for putting together the National Intelligence Estimate, the NIE, you were convinced Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction, stockpiles of chemical and biological agents.
PILLAR: That's right, and there were a number of analytical errors procedurally and so on that the Silberman-Robb Commission, which overall I believe did an excellent job, succeeded in describing very thoroughly in the report.
Changes have been made. Changes were necessary. More changes need to be made following some of the suggestions of the Silberman- Robb report. So that's absolutely right.
BLITZER: So the intelligence was bad. You admit that.
PILLAR: The intelligence was certainly flawed.
BLITZER: And last year when I interviewed the vice president, Dick Cheney, we spoke about the intelligence. Listen to a little excerpt from that interview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: I've got a certain sympathy for the intelligence committee. But their judgment was overwhelmingly that he did in fact have weapons of mass destruction.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: He is basically saying look, you guys told me, meaning the CIA, the U.S. intelligence community, he had weapons of mass destruction.
PILLAR: With respect, all due respect to the vice president, on something as critical, as say when Iraq would get nuclear weapons, the judgment of the intelligence community was, although we don't know for sure, probably several years away.
Mr. Cheney in one of his speeches, for example, voiced a contrary view that he was very close to getting weapons.
BLITZER: And he based that on his experience as defense secretary in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. At that time the assessment was the IAEA, as well as the U.S. assessment. He was years away from a nuclear weapon. But later after the war, the U.S. intelligence community and he learned they were very close.
PILLAR: That's right. And the vice president is absolutely correct to point out that the intelligence community underestimated back in 1991 how close Saddam was. And perhaps another one of those analytic errors that went into the faulty analysis over a decade later was a sort of overcompensation.
BLITZER: Because he had been burned before.
PILLAR: That's right. But then the question arises. Once you had this strong consensus, that he had such weapons, the consensus that everyone seemed to share before 2003, how strongly do intelligence analysts challenge that consensus? What is the environment in which they operate? Do they have an incentive to challenge that consensus? And in this case, the incentive really wasn't there. BLITZER: Here's what the Senate Intelligence Committee in their assessment, pre-war intelligence assessments on Iraq, concluded on 2004.
"The Committee did not find any evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a result of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence products to conform with administration policy or that anyone even attempted to coerce, influence, or pressure analysts to do so.
You were the top analyst. Did anyone from the vice president's office, from the White House, from the Pentagon, pressure you into coming up with intelligence, with analysis that you felt uncomfortable with?
PILLAR: No, because that kind of question picks up only the most blatant and crudest forms of politicization, which are very rare. And when they do occur they are usually not successfully.
To the extent there was politicization in this case it was far more subtle. You had dozen of analysts throughout the community making all kind of judgments on the wording of all kinds, of things from aluminum tubes to uranium ore.
Many of the things that the Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, justly criticized the community on had to do with matter of caveat, nuance wording. So there were plenty of opportunities for more subtle kinds of bias to creep in, as a result of the environment in which analysts operating.
But direct pressure, direct arm twisting, which is what the committee's question had to do? No.
BLITZER: One final question before I let you go. Why should anyone take the U.S. intelligence committee -- communities' assessments now at face value on Iran and nuclear weapons or North Korea given this track record on Iraq?
PILLAR: That's a very good question. And with particular reference to say, Iran, it is important to realize how much we basically don't know. There seems to have grown up a major presumption about at least where Iran is heading with its nuclear weapons program if it has one. But in the end we simply don't know. There are a lot of uncertainties.
BLITZER: Paul Pillar, I hope to have you back here in THE SITUATION ROOM. Thanks very much for joining us.
PILLAR: Thank you, Wolf.
BLITZER: Up next, intelligence leaks and the White House. Do new allegations lead to the vice president's office? And if so, what's the fall-out if any? Standing by James Carville and Bay Buchanan in today's strategy session. Plus, a major snowstorm heading for the East Coast. Jacqui Jeras will join us with your weekend weather forecast. You are in THE SITUATION ROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: Welcome back.
Let's go to the CNN global headquarters in Atlanta.
Fredricka Whitfield standing by with a closer look at other stories making news.
Hi Fred.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello to you, Wolf.
Officials in Iraq have certified the results of December's parliamentary elections. The official results confirm that a Shiite- led party won more than 45 percent of the seats.
There is no let-up in violence in Iraq, however. Seven Iraqis died in a car bomb at a mosque today. An Iraqi/Sunni cleric was kidnapped late yesterday. The kidnappers reportedly wore Iraqi army uniforms.
And two U.S. Marines died yesterday. They were killed by a roadside bomb near Fallujah. That brings the total number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the start of the war to 2,267.
The Kuwaiti television station that broadcast tape of kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll yesterday now reports a renewed threat from her kidnappers. According to the television station, Carroll's captors say they will kill her if their demands are not met by February 26th. Carroll was kidnapped in Iraq last month.
And more protests against cartoons of the profit Mohammed. Thousands demonstrated at India's largest mosque today burning Danish flags. The cartoon's first were accomplished in a Danish newspaper. At least 11 people have been killed in protests across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Fred, thank you very much.
Protests against those controversial cartoons are spilling over the Internet. Danish web sites are being attacked, defaced and taken down.
Our Internet reporter Abbi Tatton has more -- Abbi.
ABBI TATTON, INTERNET REPORTER: Wolf, hundreds of Danish web sites attacked in the last couple of weeks by computer hackers with a political message.
This site here was defaced with a skull and bones and complete with audio. You can hear a call to prayer playing in the background. When you click on it and a message from Muslims all over the world.
These sites were collected by the organization Zone H, which tracks this kind of attack on the Internet and they have many examples.
This one here you can see that Danish products were the target and the Danish flag as well.
Another site collected by F Secure. This is a security computer company online shows the clear object of the attack right here siting the Mohammed cartoons.
Now one site that was the subject of an attempted attack that didn't work was this now-famous publication, the Danish newspaper that originally accomplished those cartoons back in September -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Abbi, thank you very much.
Today in our strategy session the former FEMA Director Michael Brown takes the Senate hot seat to try to defend his actions during Hurricane Katrina. Who is to blame for the failed response?
Plus, Washington is buzzing with the news that the vice president's former Chief of Staff Lewis Scooter Libby says he was authorized by superiors to disclose classified information. What could the fall-out be for the White House? Joining us now are CNN political analyst Democratic strategist James Carville and Bay Buchanan, president of American Cause.
Let's listen to this exchange that Michael Brown had with Senator Pryor earlier today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARK PRYOR (D), ARKANSAS: Do you feel like you've been sort of set up to be the scapegoat?
BROWN: Yes, sir. I can't lie to you. Yes, I feel that way.
PRYOR: Do you feel like the administration's done that to you?
BROWN: I certainly feel somewhat abandoned.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: He's got to feel abandoned because everybody was piling on this guy earlier today. What goes through your mind when you see what has unfolded?
JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, when they got Abu Ghraib, they got Private England from West Virginia, and they blamed it all on her. At least they're picking a slightly bigger target. Where's Mr. Chertoff in all of this?
BLITZER: He's testifying Tuesday. CARVILLE: Tuesday. And where is President Bush? If something like this happened, and I knew about it, the White House knew about it the night before, I don't know if I'd face the American people. I really don't. If I was Chertoff or the president.
And it's kind of odd that they kind of say, "Well, it's Michael Brown," as if he just kind of appeared out of nowhere. They didn't appoint him or anything like that. It's going to be interesting to see what they say. But it sure looks like a bunch of rats leaving a sinking ship to me.
BLITZER: And James speaks as someone originally from Louisiana, so he's sensitive to this whole issue. But what do you think?
BAY BUCHANAN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN CAUSE: Well, you know, I think Michael Brown has every right to defend himself. I think he did a very strong job. He said "Look, I made some mistakes. Some serious mistakes." And in fairness to the president, if you remember early on, he tried to defend Michael Brown and say he wasn't going to get fired. But the pressure was so great, they had to cut him loose.
So it's clear Michael Brown made mistakes, and I think if this is a serious investigation where they're trying to find out what went wrong, they should listen to the man and see if indeed he has some good points that can be reviewed and some serious changes to be made so next time this nation might be ready for such an emergency.
BLITZER: Representative Tom Davis, himself a Republican of Virginia, says this. He says, "The president is still at his ranch" -- referring to what was going on those first couple days -- "the vice president is still fly-fishing in Wyoming. The president's chief of staff is in Maine. In retrospect, don't you think it would have been better to pull together? They should have had better leadership. It is disengagement."
To a certain degree, Bay, it plays into Republican political interest to make Michael Brown look like he's totally responsible because that eases the pressure on others more senior.
BUCHANAN: I agree with you. And I think that was what was wrong. I think some of the senators came down on him so hard because they were like, "What do you mean you're not taking responsibility? That's your job." And I don't think they looked at this as honest as they should in the sense that that's the investigation.
Let's find out what happened and give everybody a chance to express their concerns. And so I think that's what put him on the defensive. And he had a right to defend his own reputation.
CARVILLE: Michael brown is the number three guy in this chain. You have Chertoff, and then you have the president. Look, a lot of democratic governments around the world would have to resign on something this big.
BLITZER: If this were a parliamentary system. CARVILLE: If this were a parliamentary system, this government would probably have to resign. I wouldn't even venture would happen to say if he were in Japan and the head of government was responsible for a disaster of this magnitude.
What strikes me is how they go about their daily business knowing that they completely were completely negligent, not just to mention incompetent. And I think that Bay is right, and Brown ought to defend himself. He was a political hack that was put in a job that he had no business being in.
But again, you have -- you go back and you look at the whole thing in Iraq. And it's some PFC or a corporal here or something like that. I mean, I hope that these Senators don't play the game of saying this is all about Michael Brown.
BUCHANAN: And also, there's some state responsibility and city responsibility. It goes across the board. This is not Democratic or Republican.
BLITZER: Let's talk about this latest relation involving Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's now-indicted former chief of staff. In this letter that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, writes to Libby and his attorneys, he says that Libby testified that he was authorized by, quote, "superiors," to leak classified information to reporters.
Ted Kennedy said this in a statement yesterday. "These charges, if true, represent a new low in the already sordid case of partisan interest being placed over national security. The vice president's vindictiveness in defending the misguided war in Iraq is obvious. If he used classified to defend it, he should be prepared to take full responsibility."
BUCHANAN: Of course, that's coming from Senator Kennedy of course, the key words being "if true." First of all, Mr. Libby was indicted for lying to the grand jury. So therefore, we have to take a step back and say, "Which part of his testimony is true, and which part do we think is not true?"
Secondly, it's clear here now that some of this stuff is normally classified is often declassified. And they do believe that indeed this could have been declassified before it was leaked.
BLITZER: Some of it was declassified after it was leaked though. While it was leaked, it was still highly secret classified information. But it does raise the question of hypocrisy.
Sometimes, as we know, throughout all administrations, government officials leak classified information to reporters because they have some political agenda or some strategic or national security agenda they want to advance, and they want to get that information into "The New York Times" or "The Washington Post."
CARVILLE: I think we just saw a senior, very extremely senior CIA man coming and say they were cherry-picking some. And so they were going through -- apparently, according to Mr. Libby, they were going through, and who has it, a whole legal question, who has the right to declassify stuff. I don't even know if the vice president has that.
And so they were cherry-picking. They were cherry-picking stuff out of the CIA. They were putting subtle pressure on the CIA to do this. And, of course, they were manipulating "The New York Times." They got Judith Miller to write a series of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
The problem is, did they have the authority to declassify this? And, of course, we know it's not honest. They're not going to take responsibility for doing that, they're not going to take responsibility for a whole city underwater.
BUCHANAN: It's a violation of federal law to move information that's classified. And certainly, this prosecutor, a very fine prosecutor, knows that. And that's not something hard to prove, Wolf. So I ask you, why wouldn't he also add that to the indictment rather than just the perjury, which is much for difficult?
BLITZER: You say not hard to prove. That happens to be very hard to prove.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: We've got good federal former prosecutors coming in the next hour. We'll continue this conversation.
(CROSSTALK)
They're going to be here in THE SITUATION ROOM. We'll talk about that specific point. Bay, James, thanks very much to both of you for joining us.
Up next, we'll have an exclusive interview with the House Majority Leader John Boehner. He's the new leader in the House of Republicans of Representatives. He has his work cut out for him. Our Ed Henry has been speaking with him.
And while President Bush was in a private meeting defending his domestic eavesdropping program, guess who was able to eavesdrop on him. You're going to want to see this. Stay with us.
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BLITZER: Welcome back. House Republicans are huddled in a strategy session on Maryland's Eastern Shore, grappling with some big problems facing the party. President Bush stopped by this afternoon once again to defend this program of eavesdropping without a court's commission. Our congressional correspondent Ed Henry also paid a visit, sitting down with the new House Majority Leader John Boehner.
Tell us what happened, Ed.
ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, in an exclusive interview with CNN, the new majority leader was blunt about the Republicans' political problems. But he expressed optimism that they can turn it around in time for the midterm elections. And he lashed out at critics raising questions about his ethics.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HENRY: John Boehner hasn't had a moment to saver the euphoria of being elected majority leader, given the enormous political challenges facing Republicans.
REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER: It's like this mountain shot right up in the air, and it keeps getting steeper and higher, and I've got to find a way to get over it.
HENRY: Boehner thinks critics have made a mountain out of a mole hill about his ties to lobbyist and sharply defended his decision to rent his apartment from a Washington lobbyist.
BOEHNER: We went and did a survey to make sure I was paying fair market prices. As a matter of fact, I think I pay over the fair market price for a basement apartment. But why can't I rent an apartment from someone who happens to be a lobbyist? I just think the whole story is silly.
HENRY: Regardless of perception, Boehner says he won't dump his friends who happen to be lobbyists.
BOEHNER: Most people look out and go, "Lobbyists, oh, they're bad people." They're normal human beings. They have a job to do. Some of them get paid very little. Some of them get paid a lot. But if it weren't for lobbyists, the legislative process could never work.
HENRY: This is John Boehner on offense, and he's preaching the same for House Republicans gather here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland for strategy sessions aimed at helping them dig out of deep political trouble, including a Friday pep talk from the president.
BOEHNER: Listen, the president's numbers aren't as good as they could be. The situation in Iraq is still tenuous, at best. And so, you know, the numbers aren't real good. There's no sense of kidding anybody about it. But if we bring ourselves together and get ourselves on offense and do what the American people expect of us, we're going to do fine in November.
HENRY: Boehner chided Democrats for failing to present an alternative agenda to capitalize on Republican woes.
BOEHNER: Our friends across the aisle, while they are the opposition, they don't have any ideas. We've been hearing about their contract, their big package. We hear about it, and we hear about it, but we never see it.
HENRY: Boehner knows Republicans can only stop playing defense over scandals involving Tom DeLay and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff after they craft an ethics reform plan. But the majority leader has raised eyebrows about his own commitment to reform because of his relationship with lobbyists and by shooting down Speaker Dennis Hastert's call for a ban on private travel.
BOEHNER: We're not going to agree on everything. My goodness, Ed, I've been married for 32 years. Do you think my wife and I agree over everything? Doesn't mean we ought to get divorced. We're married.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HENRY: Boehner also vowed that he's wedded to the idea of coming up with a strong ethics reform package, but he would not be pinned down on a timetable or any details. That's due in part to the fact that Republicans, even while they're meeting at this retreat, having a hard time coming up with a consensus on that plan -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Ed Henry reporting for us. Good work, Ed. Thank you very much.
This ironic moment from today's House Republican caucus meeting. After the president wrapped up his public comments to the lawmakers, reporters were ushered out of the room. But the president continued speaking to the Republicans in private.
But guess what? It wasn't as private as he would have wanted. The audio from the microphone was kept on and journalists back at the White House were able to hear every word that the president was saying, the president thinking he was speaking in private.
By the way, the topic of the president's private remarks: eavesdropping. The president repeated earlier statements that he's made, trying to clear up the domestic spying program with top government lawyers. He did not break any new ground, we're told. Could have been a disaster for Mr. Bush.
Coming up, millions of people watched the State of the Union address. Did it help the president's poll numbers?
And in our 7:00 p.m. Eastern hour, when disaster struck the Gulf Coast, who knew what and when? You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.
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BLITZER: On today's political radar, Gallup's first poll since the State of the Union address finds no bounce for President Bush. Mr. Bush's job approval rating stands at 42 percent in the new survey, down one point from the last poll.
Forty-one million Americans was watched last week's primetime speech. That's up three million from last year's State of the Union address. Apparently, at least so far, not giving the president any bump at all.
Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain are on top of the polls in an early look at the next race for the White House. According to a new survey by the American Research Group, in the crucial state of New Hampshire, Senator Clinton is the number one choice for the Democratic presidential nomination. Senator McCain is the overwhelming choice on the Republican side.
A photo may be worth a thousand words, but for one Democrat running for Congress, it's worth tens of thousands of dollars. Our Internet reporter Jacki Schechner has the story -- Jacki.
JACKI SCHECHNER, INTERNET REPORTER: Wolf, this is the photograph in question. It was taken at this year's State of the Union address. And that is President Bush embracing Congressman Henry Cuellar of the 28th district of Texas.
Well, this photograph angered a lot of progressives, Democrats, liberals online, and they rallied behind his opponent in a special primary election coming up on March 7th. Now, The Daily Kos led the charge. This is the top liberal blog.
They called it a Lieberman moment, saying that even though Cuellar is a Democrat, they consider him disloyal. They started a fundraising campaign. A lot of the top liberal blogs joined in on that. They're raving over at Actblue.com. They've raised close to $82,000 right now.
They say it's reminiscent of another campaign where they raised close to half a million for Paul Hackett in Ohio last special election. Now, we talked to both campaigns. Rodriguez has said this is, quote, "a gift from heaven. And Cuellar's campaign says the actual district is not as liberal as those raising money online. And he was one of many Democrats, Wolf, that was sitting on the aisle.
BLITZER: Jacki, thank you very much. Very interesting.
Up next, the former chief of staff to the Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly says he was authorized to leak classified information. Jack Cafferty has your reaction.
And in our 7:00 p.m. Eastern hour, scandal in a small town. The charges involve sex, drugs, and the county jail. We'll tell you what's going on. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.
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BLITZER: Jack's back with "The Cafferty File" -- Jack.
CAFFERTY: I want to know what that thing you were talking about. Sex, drugs, and the county jail?
BLITZER: You've got to watch, 7:00 Eastern, THE SITUATION ROOM. Ed Lavandera has got a great story, and our viewers are going to enjoy it.
CAFFERTY: Terrific headline. You know, it just occurred to me. If it wasn't for all the stuff going on in Washington, D.C., THE SITUATION ROOM would be a 15-minute program. But it's not, it's three hours long.
The special prosecution in the CIA leak case says that Scooter Libby, vice president's former chief of staff, told a grand jury he was authorized by his superiors to disclose classified information to reporters. The information was about Iraq's weapons' capability. The question we asked was, what does it mean if Scooter Libby's superiors authorized him to leak classified information to the press?
Gary in Philadelphia writes, "It means the superiors who authorized the leak information themselves leaked the information, then used Libby as a proxy to do so.
Ruey in Brownstoll, Michigan: "Scooter's superior was Vice President Cheney. And it's not surprise if he instructed him to leak the information in order to cast doubt on Ambassador Joe Wilson's claims. The next question becomes, was it legal? Does the vice president have the authority to leak classified material? Isn't that a call that's reserved for the president? Oh, wait a minute, isn't Cheney already the president?"
Lonnie in Baltimore, Maryland: What the leak scandal means is our country has reached such a pathetic state of polarization that 50 percent of the people are willing to completely ignore the wrongdoings of their leaders simply because it means having to give ground to their rivals. We might as well rename the country "The Divided States of America."
Chris in Sacramento: "As a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Air Force, I know the process of declassifying information is not one that is done by word of mouth. Even at the highest level, it's irresponsible for someone just to say it's OK to reveal sensitive information. I'm deeply concerned with the way information is given to the public."
Norm in Petaluma, California: "Unless a special prosecutor is appointed, nothing will be done. Republicans won't do anything, and the Democrats are so inept, they can't do anything" -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Jack, see you in a few minutes. Thank you very much.
Still to come, our political play of the week. People are talking. Bill Schneider will explain.
And in our next hour, bracing for the storm. It's already snowing in Tennessee. We're going to tell you who's likely to be hit next and when. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.
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BLITZER: Welcome back. There's a familiar refrain echoing around the nation's capital these days. Our senior political analyst Bill Schneider has been listening, and he can tell us more what's going on -- Bill?
BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Wolf, here in Washington, the halls are alive with the sound of music. What are the voices singing? Why, the political play of the week, of course.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) SCHNEIDER: You've heard of the three tenors. Now three Washington figures in trouble are singing like canaries. You might call their song "It Wasn't Just Me."
"It wasn't just me," sings Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's indicted former chief of staff. This week, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed in grand jury documents that Libby testified that his White House superiors authorized him to disclose intelligence information to the press. A source close to the case tells CNN one of those superiors was Cheney. The vice president authorizes leaks. That's quite a song.
"It wasn't just me," sings former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty last month to bribery. When asked about Abramoff, who raised more than $100,000 for the Bush campaign, the president said...
BUSH: I don't know him.
SCHNEIDER: "The guy saw in almost a dozen settings and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids," Abramoff wrote in an email.
"It wasn't just me," sings former FEMA director Michael Brown. He says his superiors knew a levy had broken the night Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
BROWN: So for them to now claim that we didn't have awareness of it, I think, is just baloney.
SCHNEIDER: Did the White House know?
BROWN: If I've told Joe Hagen (ph) or told Andy Card, I've told the president.
SCHNEIDER: The three men are singing to save themselves by implicating higher-ups. Their songs didn't win any Grammys this week, but they do win the political play of the week.
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SCHNEIDER: "It Wasn't Just Me" turns out to be an old song. Actually, it was recorded by a group called The Muckers. But it's a tune that people here have been singing in Washington for years -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Bill, thank you very much. Bill Schneider reporting.
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