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Hagel Resigns as Defense Secretary; Who Will Be Next Secretary Of Defense; Calls for Calm Awaiting Grand Jury; Benghazi Report; Nuclear Talks with Iran

Aired November 24, 2014 - 13:00   ET

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

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 6:00 p.m. in London, 8:00 p.m. in Jerusalem, 9:30 p.m. in Tehran, Iran. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.

We begin with stunning news from the White House. Chuck Hagel now out as the secretary of defense. Although the president made it sound as if this is his decision, the secretary of defense's decision on his own timetable, CNN sources say he is, in fact, being forced out.

Hagel, the first enlisted combat veteran to serve as secretary and the only Republican in the cabinet, will stay on until the president names his replacement and that replacement is confirmed by the Senate. Many say several problems plaguing the Defense Department triggered the decision, the surprisingly tough fight against ISIS, the growing violence in Iraq, the drawdown of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and pressing military budget problems. Nevertheless, the president says Hagel leaves the department on firm footing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHUCK HAGEL, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: It's been the greatest privilege of my life. The greatest privilege of my life to lead and most important to serve. To serve with the men and women of the Defense Department and support their families. I am immensely proud of what we've accomplished during this time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Let's go to our Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr. Say, is this something the president had to do to quiet some of the critics of what's going on, the ongoing battle with ISIS? Give us a little background, some perspective, Barbara, on what has occurred today.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Wolf, across Washington, there has been chatter, if you will, for weeks that the White House wanted to make a change in the foreign policy team, that the president was dissatisfied. You saw all kinds of stories being leaked about this and then the debacle for the White House at the midterm elections. Somebody has to pay, right? That's the general theory. The president was not going to fire Susan Rice, a personal friend to some extent. He was not going to dismiss John Kerry, Secretary of State. Kerry very high profile. Hagel, essentially, perhaps, became the last man standing.

Hagel was seen as an implementer of the policy that the White House set. And, in fact, that's what a secretary of defense does, to some extent. All of these problems, all of these issues not solved by simply changing the person at the top. That's very clear. But the White House, you know, wanted to make a change. Hagel knew it. He had been talking to the president, we are told, for the last several weeks, came to the decision, mutual? Perhaps not really. Because he was not asked to stay. Very well aware of the sniping and the political chatter about him. Very well aware the White House wanted to make that change.

So, by all indications, he was basically forced out and the decision -- after making the decision, it was very closely held, we know, right up until the end. In fact, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey, didn't even know about it until sometime in the -- in the short period of time before the announcement was made, hours, a couple of days, we don't really know. But it's not like anybody knew that Hagel and the president were going to do this. Very closely held.

Now, the question, of course, Wolf, is where do you go from here? You put a new secretary of defense in but what do you really change? Do you suddenly change policy? Do you put troops on the ground in Iraq? Do you have a greater presence in Syria? Is that where all of this is going? That'll be very tough going for the president if that's what he chooses to do because, of course, it's been all about no troops on the ground. And General Dempsey has already said, if it came to it, he would recommend a small number of troops on the ground in Iraq. So, there's a lot of churn here still to be sorted out -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thanks very much.

Hagel is very frustrated. That's a direct quote and I'm quoting the Republican Senator John McCain who spoke with Hagel earlier this morning. McCain, who was expected to become the next chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee which will have to approve any new secretary of defense nominee, called in to a Phoenix radio talk show.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA (via telephone): They're going to say, well, it was time for a change and all that. But I can tell you, he was in my office last week. He was very frustrated. We have no strategy to combat ISIS. We have no way of helping the Ukrainians. We refuse to give them weapons to defend themselves. We watched the turmoil in the far east with the Chinese asserting themselves. And we see a lack of U.S. influence unlike unknown in history. Already the White House people are leaking, well, he wasn't up to the job. Believe me, he was up to the job. It was the job that he was given where he really was never really brought into that real tight circle inside the White House that makes all the decisions.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right, let's get some perspective on this. Joining us is Jeremy Bash, he's a former chief of staff to Leon Panetta during Panetta's time as the CIA director as well as the secretary of defense. Jeremy, thanks very much for joining us. Give me your quick reaction to what we just heard from John McCain. Because you know one of the complaints about, not just the defense department but the state department, the CIA, the Congress Department that the White House micromanages everything. They really can't make decisions on their own and it's so frustrating to those various agencies, departments of the U.S. government.

JEREMY BASH, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO LEON PANETTA: Well, Wolf, Hagel is really a class act. And you saw from his statement and the White House earlier, he's a patriot. He has served our country as an enlisted soldier and now as secretary of defense. And I think the president really wanted new leadership there. And, Hagel, instead of waiting for the back and forth and the discussion over the weeks, decided to do what I think is the honorable thing is to step aside.

Now, why? The job of secretary of defense is really three big jobs. The first is to oversee the personnel and readiness of the troops. The second is to oversee the budget and the acquisition, the spending of that some $600 billion a year in defense spending. And the third job, and this really is what I think the president needed new leadership on, is to oversee strategy, oversee policy, work in the chain of command between the president and the combatant commanders, work with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, sit in the National Security Council room and advise the president and be one of the architects of strategy and policy. And there, I think, we have to say that the president wanted someone else. He thought someone else could do a better job.

BLITZER: So, you have no doubt that he was pushed -- for all practical purposes, he was pushed out?

BASH: Well, my sense, Wolf, is that he's been serving a year and nine months. He's been doing a lot internally in the department. He's been working on health care. He's been working on sexual assault prevention. He's been working on cyber security. He's been working on a number of initiatives. Just last week in California, many of us were there at the Reagan library when Secretary Hagel unveiled a brand-new innovation agenda for the department.

So, I think he's been working full steam ahead on certain key initiatives but it's that piece about our foreign policy and the defense element in our foreign policy. What are we going to do in Iraq? What are we going to do in Syria? What are we going to do in Afghanistan? How are we going to rebalance our forces to the Pacific? And that's where I think the president thought, hey, look, if we can get someone better in here to do the job and the array of challenges are so big over the next two years, we've got to get someone new. We've got to get fresh leadership.

BLITZER: Who's that better person to come in? You know most of the names that are out there.

BASH: Well, I've worked closely with a number of folks who have served as deputy secretaries and undersecretaries in the previous leadership chains in the Pentagon. I think it's fair to say that they will work very carefully at former deputy secretary, Ash Carter, who served as deputy to secretary Panetta. I think it's fair to say they'll look seriously at undersecretary, Michele Flournoy, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy under both Secretary Gates as well as Secretary Panetta. And the two of them, as well as a few others who really understand the strategic game, who understand the outside game, the foreign policy game, who worked with the chairman, Chairman Dempsey, the vice chairman, Admiral Winnefeld, and the combatant commanders. Those people, I think, are the people who the president will be looking to to do that job now.

BLITZER: Senator Reed, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, we put his picture up there. His name had been out there. But his office put out a statement saying, he is not interested. He was just reelected. He wants to stay as the United States senator from the state of Rhode Island. Very quickly, who are the other names you think may be out there?

BASH: Well, I don't know, Wolf. I really think it's going to be a small circle of people who this team, the president and his team, have experience with. And beyond those names that we've discussed, I'm not sure that I've heard other names, although I wouldn't rule it out that they would reach for someone on the outside. But my sense is that, with two years left, a lot of hard decisions ahead, they'll go with a trusted name, someone they know who can deliver.

BLITZER: And they -- whoever that person is will have to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee and the new chairman is expected to be John McCain. It will be very, very important and fascinating hearings, to be sure.

Jeremy, thanks very much for joining us. Jeremy Bash was Leon Panetta's chief of staff at the CIA and at the Pentagon.

Sources telling CNN, by the way, it is clear that Secretary Hagel was pushed out. But why now and what's next? Newt Gingrich and Paul Begala, they're here to discuss what is going on. Who could come in as Secretary Hagel's replacement? Stand by for that.

And the barricades are up outside the St. Louis County Justice Center. Calls for calm as the nation waits for the grand jury's decision for the shooting death of Michael Brown.

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BLITZER: Let's get back to our top story. The sudden surprising resignation of the defense secretary of the United States, Chuck Hagel. When his replacement is named, it'll be the fourth secretary of defense in the Obama administration. That's the most for any single president. Let's discuss what's going on with our CNN political commentators, Newt Gingrich and Paul Begala. How surprised were you, Newt, about the -- I was pretty surprised. Although with hindsight, maybe we shouldn't have been. But I was surprised when I heard this morning that Hagel was --

NEWT GINGRICH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, there have been rumors for two or three weeks of the kind you get in the city when the White House staff wants to knife you and get you out of the way. And so, the rumor has been out there. But what is really bizarre, given everything else we're going through is, you got the Republicans win control of the Senate. You need to get rid of one cabinet officer. You look around and you go, who should it be? Oh, I know, the only Republican serving in the cabinet --

BLITZER: But in fairness, the Republicans never liked Hagel to begin with because he had endorsed -- he endorsed --

GINGRICH: Oh, sure.

BLITZER: -- Barack Obama for president of the United States.

GINGRICH: But the guy who's going to be chairman of the Armed Services Committee really does like Hagel.

BLITZER: John McCain.

GINGRICH: McCain.

BLITZER: Yes.

GINGRICH: And all I'm saying is you would think that, just for diversity sake, they could've left one Republican in the cabinet. And so, I think, in that sense, it's a minor misstep. The bigger problem, of course, is that all the policies that are getting him in trouble are White House policies. And they're not Hagel.

BLITZER: Because that's the criticism. And you hear it from people in the administration, in the executive branch, the Obama administration, that the White House micromanages everything and it's so frustrating to these cabinet members. You've heard that criticism?

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is but I believe in a strong White House. I mean, you know, back in the day, Ronald Reagan, in his second term, still didn't even know who his housing secretary was. He ran into him at a reception and he called him Mr. Mayor. And the guy is, like, no, actually, I'm your housing secretary for six years, Mr. President. So, you don't want that kind of disengagement. I think Jeremy Bash, who you had on earlier, a very well-sourced guy, is right. He's hearing the same things I'm hearing from my friends at the White House which is this, Hagel was Mr. Inside (ph). A lot of important things on the inside of the Pentagon, taking on sexual assault, but also managing budget cuts. But now they want a Mr. Or Ms. Outside who can deal with the policy terrain, which has changed fundamentally.

And, by the way, I think we've seen the end of Pentagon budget cuts too with a Republican House, a Republican Senate and --

NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: Yes.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: There is the sequester, though, and we don't - we know -

BEGALA: Which is insane.

BLITZER: We don't have to get into that right now.

BEGALA: That should come up in the hearings, though, for this new secretary, these questions -

BLITZER: These forced - these forced budget cuts. But we'll see what happens on that.

GINGRICH: Somehow (INAUDIBLE).

BEGALA: No way to run a superpower.

BLITZER: Yes.

GINGRICH: And somehow they're going to find a way around the sequester as it relates to defense because the world is growing demonstratively more dangerous in the last 12 months. But the real question is going to be, Michele Flournoy, who I think is the most likely choice, --

BLITZER: She would be the first woman ever to be the secretary of defense.

GINGRICH: And she's both -- she has bipartisan respect. The challenge she's going to face is simple. The policies that are really screwed up are the White House policies. You can talk all you want to, we need someone to develop strategy. No, no, the people who develop strategy in this administration are sitting in the White House and there are about four of them.

BEGALA: And don't you think the playbook for the questions at the hearings, for whoever the president nominates, it may well be Ms. Flournoy, that playbook was written by Leon Panetta, who ran the Pentagon under President Obama, wrote a really scathing book attacking the president's leadership.

GINGRICH: And Bob Gates. And I just tweeted that I think Hagel now has a chance to make a lot of money writing volume three of -

BLITZER: Would be the third - the third secretary of defense critical of -

BEGALA: I didn't like him either, but -

GINGRICH: They could have a box set, the Gates, Panetta, Hagel interpretation.

BEGALA: See, I think this has a real problem. You're talking about the White House becoming more insular. Nobody wants that. But when you see person after person in whom you have invested trust, then betray that trust by stabbing you in the back, by writing a book before your term is over, it's going to make you more insular and make you want to pick somebody really close and comfortable to you. So some of this is entirely understandable.

GINGRICH: Or if (INAUDIBLE) think you ask yourself, what is it I'm doing? No, because there's one of the things you have to say about Bill Clinton was, he had an enormous level of trust and almost no matter what he did, people were loyal to him and through it all.

BLITZER: All right, let me put up the statement. The statement that John Boehner, the speaker of the House, just put out about Hagel's possible replacement. "This personnel change must be part of a larger rethinking of our strategy to confront the threats we face abroad, especially the threat posed by the rise of ISIL." What do you make of that?

BEGALA: I think he's right and I think that's the reason behind this. In other words, Chuck Hagel is a decorated combat veteran, a remarkable patriot. But the sense in the White House was, they needed somebody who had a broader sense of the changed policy strategic framework. That's exactly what Speaker Boehner is saying.

BLITZER: So the point that you're making is, and I'll put it in blunt terms, they didn't think he was up to the job?

BEGALA: To that aspect of the job. To the external driving of different defense posture around the world, as opposed to fixing challenges within the Pentagon.

GINGRICH: I think the problem was just the opposite. He was reflecting the military's view of what has to be done. The White House does not want to do what the military thinks has to be done and they're going to try to find somebody who comes in and says to the military, we're going this way, shut up and obey. And I think it's going to be a disaster.

Notice, by the way, tonight, the Iranians get rewarded by having another delay until July of the so-called deadline --

BLITZER: We're going to discuss that in a moment, the Iran nuclear deal.

GINGRICH: They're the same. It's the same problem.

BLITZER: They couldn't reach a deal, so they're going to keep -- do this extension for several more months.

All right, stand by, guys. We're going to discuss that. A lot more.

In less than an hour, by the way, the president will turn his attention to a very different manner. He will award 19 recipients, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Among the honorees, Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Congressman John Dingell, the actress Meryl Streep. We're going to have live coverage of this important ceremony. Our coverage will begin at 2:15 Eastern. I'm be anchoring our coverage around that. You're going to want to see this Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony.

Up next, much more with Newt Gingrich and Paul Begala as we take a closer look at not only what's going in the Iran nuclear discussions, but also this new report on Benghazi. What happened and the reactions to exoneration for the Obama administration, at least in large measure.

And the tension in Ferguson, Missouri, palpable right now as the city waits to hear if the grand jury will indict a white police officer for the killing of an unarmed black teenager.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: The fact is, we had four dead Americans.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I understand.

CLINTON: Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans. What difference, at this point, does it make?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: That was the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, testifying in January of 2013 about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. She was being questioned about alleged security lapses by the State Department and the CIA that were being blamed for the deaths of those four Americans, including the United States ambassador to Libya.

Let's bring back Newt Gingrich and Paul Begala.

Guys, thanks very much.

Let's talk about this new House Intelligence Committee report. Republican majority in the House of Representatives basically suggesting that there was no great intelligence failure, no cover-up, none of the accusations, basically, that have been made by a lot of the Republicans in the House and elsewhere to which Lindsey Graham, the senator from South Carolina told Gloria Borger on "State of the Union" yesterday this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: No. No. I think - I think the report's full of crap.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Why?

GRAHAM: Quite frankly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Graham was focusing in on that part of the report dealing with the talking points that were given, for example, to then U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. Let's get your reaction, first of all, to this House Intelligence Committee report.

BEGALA: Well, this is now the third major report on the Benghazi attacks, right? First - I'm not sure of the ordering, but there was a Democratic controlled Senate select committee on intelligence, bipartisan report, the Republicans joined in, found the same conclusion. There was an independent accountability review board chaired by a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and by a veteran diplomat, it found the same thing.

Now, a Republican-led committee, two-year investigation, hearings, access to classified information, full investigative powers of the House of Representatives and, if anything, a Republican bias, they find the same thing. So I think we can say case closed now. This is the most -- there were - there was something like 10 attacks like this when President Bush -- W. Bush was president. There were no investigations like this. So there's partisanship behind this but at least now we have a tri-partisanship consensus that the conspiracy theories are nuts.

BLITZER: If you read the report, they basically say there was a lot of confusion out there but there was no deliberate attempt to mislead the American public on what they knew or didn't know, but there was intense confusion.

GINGRICH: And, frankly, that's why you had the reaction from Lindsey Graham, who went on to say on the same show that he was personally lied to by the deputy director of the CIA, that the guy was not held accountable in this report and that it is an absurdity. The deputy director leaves a White House meeting, goes back and rewrites the talking points in a way that is factually false. Now, you can agree or disagree, I think it's -- this is a very strange report.

BLITZER: So you're saying that Mike Rogers, who's the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and not only the Democrats on that committee but other Republicans on that committee, they didn't do a good job with this report?

GINGRICH: Well, all I can tell you is that Trey Gowdy (ph), who heads the select committee in the House --

BLITZER: He's got a separate investigation -

BEGALA: Yes, we have another one, yes.

GINGRICH: Yes. And they pointed out that they haven't even gotten key documents out of the agency and they are - they have no idea why Rogers issued this report. And I think this is one of those things where, if you ever wanted to see a committee that had been, I think, frankly co-opted by the CIA, that's what this report's about.

BLITZER: That's a pretty strong accusation.

GINGRICH: Yes, I think -

BLITZER: Their job, and your former speaker of the House, is to oversee the CIA and not to be co-opted by (INAUDIBLE).

GINGRICH: That's right. And I've talked to four different people who have a real interest in this topic at a professional level. They are all appalled by this report. They believe it is fundamentally misleading. And they believe that it will, in fact, just go down as one of those examples of a committee that --

BLITZER: I want to get your quick reaction. Another several months they're going to continue the discussions. The U.S., the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Germany with Iran, to deal with its nuclear program. Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna, Austria, he announced that today. Are you OK with that?

BEGALA: Oh, absolutely, because while these talks go on, crippling sanctions are crushing the Iranian economy. And as long as those sanctions hold, as long as the talks are going on, those sanctions hold. Even the Russians, Hillary Clinton brought the Russians along even on these sanctions against the Iranian regime, critically important to maintain that pressure. Secretary of Kerry should be congratulated for that.

BLITZER: Because all the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are involved. They are supposedly on the same page as not only the Russians, but the Chinese as well.

GINGRICH: Sure. They're all desperately seeking to avoid a crisis. And the way you avoid a crisis is, you don't do anything. And the Iranians are quite happy to have them do nothing. I mean these are not crushing enough that the Iranians have conceded anything.

BEGALA: They are destroying the Iranian economy. Rouhani, the president of Iran, has got to get a deal and he knows that or his economy is going to collapse.

GINGRICH: Then why didn't they? They just got seven more months to keep working on nuclear weapons.

BEGALA: And seven more months where we're holding the sanctions. What happens - OK, so your strategy would be to walk away, right?

GINGRICH: Well, my -

BEGALA: John Kerry walks out and says you're bad people. How fast before the Russians, the Chinese and our other alleged friends break down that sanctioned regime and enrich the folks in Tehran?

GINGRICH: OK, so what you're suggesting is that the real advantage we currently have is the guys we totally distrust aren't doing things they could do for the guys that we really distrust?

BEGALA: Right. That's called diplomacy.

BLITZER: All right, guys, you're going to have to take this conversation to the green room because we're out of time right now. Thanks to both of you for joining us.

Just ahead, a nervous city awaits the grand jury's decision in Ferguson, Missouri. There's concern about violence if a white police officer is not indicted for killing a black unarmed teen.

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