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CNN Crossfire

Political Parallels from the Past?

Aired July 11, 2001 - 19:30   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 PRESS, HOST: Now that his apartment has been searched, will Gary Condit next take a lie detector test? Should he?

And is there a parallel between Condit and Levy and Clinton and Lewinsky?

ANNOUNCER: Live from Washington, CROSSFIRE. On the left, Bill Press. On the right, Robert Novak. In the CROSSFIRE, former Republican Congressman and impeachment manager Bill McCollum and Lanny Breuer, former Clinton special counsel.

PRESS: Good evening. Welcome to CROSSFIRE. Another day, another development in the saga of Congressman Gary Condit and missing intern Chandra Levy. But are we getting any closer to the truth? It took them 10 weeks to get around to it, but once they made their decision, D.C. police didn't wait long to search Gary Condit's apartment. They did it late last night.

Now police are negotiating with Condit's attorney to arrange a lie detector test, which hasn't been easy. So far he's neither said yes for sure, nor set a date. Meanwhile, there are those allegations by flight attendant Anne Marie Smith that Condit asked her to lie about their sexual relationship and urged her to refuse to cooperate with authorities in the Levy case. Smith spent the day in Washington meeting with federal investigators.

And so the police continue to investigate. The talk shows talk about nothing else. Condit tries to do his job, and Chandra Levy is still missing -- Bob.

ROBERT NOVAK, HOST: Lanny Breuer, thanks for coming in. You spent some of the best time of your life trying to bail out Bill Clinton from the difficulties he got himself into. Doesn't Gary Condit's problems remind you of the president's difficulties in the Monica Lewinsky affair?

LANNY BREUER, FMR. CLINTON SPECIAL COUNSEL: Bob, thank you very much for having me. Clearly, Congressman Condit is finding himself in a terrible media frenzy. And it's dealing with an issue where he was with a younger woman. So obviously there, there are some similarities. But obviously here there is a real difference. We are talking about a missing young woman and my hunch is that right now from what I have heard Congressman Condit has been cooperating with the police. PRESS: Congressman McCollum. Good to have you back.

BILL MCCOLLUM (R), FMR. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Good to be back.

PRESS: You were so quick to pile on Bill Clinton, so I want to ask you this. If this is so bad, what Condit has done, why is it that not one Republican in the House of Representatives has called on Gary Condit to resign nor even ask for a hearing by the Ethics Committee?

MCCOLLUM: First of all, there is a criminal investigation going on, presumably a missing person investigation. I think everybody is a little respectful of that. Secondly, I think there is a measurable difference between these two situations. Gary Condit certainly committed an indiscretion, he had an affair, had a cover-up apparently, at least that is what it appears to be, but there is no evidence yet that we have seen, that he actually committed a crime.

And, President Clinton on the other hand, clearly in my judgment and I think many others, committed the crime perjury and obstruction of justice and did it by lying under oath in a court proceeding. So I think there are significant differences. We will have to wait and see in the Condit matter.

BREUER: If I may, I disagree with that analysis in the sense that as I said at the time I represented President Clinton I continue to believe, what the president did was not a crime. It was an indiscretion and we as a nation watched the president ultimately acknowledge the fact that he had had a relationship of sorts with an intern. I hear Congressman Condit's situation is also one with a young woman and we are dealing with a missing woman. I really don't think that there are the kind of parallels that you are describing.

MCCOLLUM: The reality is that there is no parallel in one sense, and I'm trying to say that in this instance, that is, there was a crime committed in the sense of perjury. Lying under oath is a crime. It simply is.

NOVAK: You are saying Clinton was worse?

MCCOLLUM: Yes, Clinton was worse, but we do have a missing young woman here, and you are right about one thing, and that is that the focus really should be on that, and that the real problem here in my judgment is that Gary Condit made a huge mistake in allowing this focus to come on himself and not being forthcoming early on.

He is a political figure that, even more than a private citizen, should say to him, wow, no matter what happens, no matter how bad this may appear, I've got to come forward right now and tell everything I know to everybody.

NOVAK: Lanny Breuer, let me give you a comment about Congressman Condit, not just from a rank-and-file, a back row congressman, but from the majority leader of the House of Representatives

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. RICHARD ARMEY (R-TX), HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER: The tragic thing for Gary from his personal point of view, is he's not going to get away with this sort of thing the way Bill Clinton did. So, if he's got his fat in the fire, I think he's going to have to live with it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOVAK: That is that is the truth isn't it? That it's going to be much more difficult for -- politically -- for Congressman Condit to escape whole from this than it was for President Clinton? It appears to be, although they both thought they'd be serial philanderers, it looks like Congressman Condit's in even a worse jam?

BREUER: Congressman Condit has a terrible dilemma of course. I mean, he is, as I understand, cooperating with the police and I think he needs to do that. And he owes the police, and he owes the American people the fact that he cooperated with the police.

Obviously, it sounds like he has terrible political situation, but I don't think I'm the right person to judge that. That will be between Congressman Condit and his constituents. To me, what matters right now is are we going to find Miss Levy. And anything that the police can do or that the press, frankly, can do to highlight the situation so it makes it more likely that Miss Levy is found seems to me the appropriate thing right now.

NOVAK: But you are a lawyer, and you are used to be engaged at very high level damage control. It would seem to me, that the difficulty for Congressman Condit, by all indications, by Ann Marie Smith, what she's saying, is that he may have been suborning perjury. He certainly was not telling the truth. His aides who were representing him were not telling the truth. He's in big trouble. I'm not saying he had anything to do with her disappearance. He is in big trouble just from what we know, isn't he?

BREUER: I think, Bob, the fact that every day on the press we are talking about Congressman Condit, the fact that we are all here discussing it, I think it ain't good for him. I think we can all acknowledge that.

And, I'm sure Congressman Condit would wish he was not household word. But I don't know whether or not that this is a criminal matter. As far as I know the police have not acknowledged yet that this is a criminal matter. They have said it is a missing persons matter. And obviously, anything that and specs that, I think is good. But the question is is Congressman Condit finding himself in a terrible situation? Of course it is a terrible situation. I'm sure he and everybody would agree with.

MCCOLLUM: I served six years as chairman of House Crime Subcommittee and I know as you do that we don't have the evidence of a crime here but what we do have is a missing person.

BREUER: Right. MCCOLLUM: And there is nothing worse, absolutely nothing worse, than a family with a missing person. And this fact that Condit's out there and all attention is getting to it is exacerbating the problem. It really is.

PRESS: I want to ask you about that....

NOVAK: Exacerbated the problem?

MCCOLLUM: Exacerbated it for the family, and maybe obstructed the investigation.

PRESS: I do want to ask you about that focus. Congressman Condit got -- something unusual happened today. A member of Congress was actually willing to speak out about this case and she actually had some positive thing to say about Gary Condit. Nancy Pelosi from California. I'd like to listen to what Nancy had to say, please.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), CALIFORNIA: I know one thing for sure. Gary Condit did not have anything to do with the disappearance of Chandra Levy. I know as a mother of five children, four daughters, one of whom lives in that neighborhood, that our major concern should be focused on finding Chandra Levy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PRESS: Do you agree with her? Or do you think he killed Chandra Levy?

MCCOLLUM: Well, I think it is very unfortunate that a lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that he is some way at fault for something that bad happened to Chandra Levy. We don't know. We have no way of knowing. The presumption I would like to believe is that he didn't. I have known Gary Condit, I like Gary Condit personally, I think he had a good reputation, probably, except for this -- still does in the House.

He comes from a relatively conservative district and he voted a lot of times on the conservative line like I did. I think right now there are two sad things: No. 1, we've got a missing young woman and the tragedy of her family and No. 2, what's happened to Gary Condit personally, and the reflection all of this has on the House of Representatives, which we haven't mentioned tonight, which, again, the public generally thinks the worst of everyone of the 535 House members and Senate members.

PRESS: And I agree with what you said, you've got two tracks here. The one track is a missing intern, the other track is Gary Condit, and what other extracurricular activities he may have been involved in and may not have been forthcoming about in the beginning.

That is something that the police have to deal with, too, and if I may again, Chief Ramsey who seems to be on CNN 24 hours day, he was on again, early this morning, on CNN, and talked about this dilemma for the police, if we can hear Chief Ramsey.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF CHARLES RAMSEY, D.C. METROPOLITAN POLICE: We don't have any evidence of a crime yet. What we know we have is a missing person. He is one of about 99 or 100 people or so that we've interviewed that had some kind of contact in some form or another with Miss. Levy. Unfortunately all the focus is on Mr. Condit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PRESS: Now notice he said "unfortunately, the focus is on Condit" because the focus is not on who could have done harm to Miss Levy, the focus is on who was having affair with Miss Levy.

MCCOLLUM: Well, that unfortunately -- and it is the word unfortunately -- is the normal human reaction. This is a human interest story. This is like Princess Diana. This is a public figure involved. If we didn't have Gary Condit or Congressman involved here this would not be the front page story it is today.

Now would it be any less tragic for the family? Probably not. I mean you lost a daughter. You don't know where she is. It's horrible. But the reality is that whenever you have a public figure this is going to happen. And, again, the reason this is so extreme is that Condit put himself in this position.

Did he commit crimes like I believe President Clinton did? No, that was after the fact. Did he cover up something? Did he cover up something? Apparently he did, and he tried to go away from an indiscretion that I wouldn't agree with. He made the mistake of having this affair in the first place, he then made the mistake of trying to cover it up. But we have no evidence of a crime or of his criminal behavior here.

BREUER: And Bill, I agree with much of what you said. I do think the tragedy is terrible for the family. And what's most important is to try to find Miss Levy. But I think we have to look at something. In your clip there, Chief Ramsey says it's not a criminal matter.

Congressman Condit has clearly made mistakes. I don't think anyone could questions that. On the other hand yesterday he permitted his home to be searched. That is a fairly extraordinary measure. It is very rare in a missing persons investigation, not even a criminal case, for someone to open up their home and allow to it be investigated.

NOVAK: It's 10 weeks after the missing -- he could have scrubbed it.

PRESS: The same day they asked him.

NOVAK: Right. That is true but -- 10 weeks!

BREUER: You can fault him and say he should have come out earlier but he certainly has made himself available and his home available.

NOVAK: I have been covering Congress over 44 years, since 1957, and with all due respect to a former congressman, these people are like the Mafia the way they stick together.

MCCOLLUM: Wait a minute.

NOVAK: We have -- we have, we have actually blood-seeking congressmen on the Republican side, who won't come on this program to talk about Gary Condit. And I want to ask you about Miss Pelosi, who is running, she is in the lead to become the No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives, the House Democratic whip. How can she say I know for a fact he didn't do anything wrong? Isn't that very injudicious? We don't know that he did anything wrong, but she doesn't know he didn't.

BREUER: I think that is right. But look, Miss Pelosi is acting like good friend here, and if you were asked me about a dear friend of mine, I would vouch for my dear friend. I don't know the congressman, but that is what she was saying here. And whether she is right or not right, I'm hopeful that she is right.

But I think she was speaking as a person, as a human. Certainly, in no sense has been hurting this investigation that someone who cares about Congressman Condit comes forward and speaks on his behalf.

NOVAK: She is not somebody who is just on the street corner. She is am important Congressman, and we have all kinds of indication that the Congresswoman was suborning perjury, that he was misleading the police. I mean those are wrong things.

BREUER: You know, you may have information that I don't have. And I'm not here to defend Congressman Condit but I'm not aware that he has suborned any perjury and I'm not aware that he has misled the police. I don't know about his public statements.

NOVAK: He told Ann Marie Smith to sign an affidavit.

BREUER: As I understand it he gave an affidavit or his lawyer gave an affidavit to her lawyer.

NOVAK: That isn't what she says.

MCCOLLUM: I think this is one of the reasons why you don't see congressman coming forward and saying much here. There are two things at play: Number one is, they really do want to distance themselves from any time there is a problem there. I have been in the body, I understand that. It's a political thing. They don't know.

But secondly, they truly do, and many of them, especially Judiciary Committee members on both sides of the aisle understand you have an ongoing investigation. And it is very difficult to talk about this. It is very difficult for the chief, 90 other people to look at.

I don't think what Condit did was right, but I'm with you to the extent that I don't think we should be finally judging this person at all.

NOVAK: We are going to have to take a break, and when we come back we will revisit some of the things that Gary Condit said about Bill Clinton not too many years ago.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOVAK: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE. Are we reliving the agony of Bill Clinton in the ordeal of Gary Condit? We're asking Lanny Breuer, a special counsel in President Bill Clinton's White House, who sees little resemblance between the two cases, and former Congressman Bill McCollum of Florida, the Republican impeachment manager who does see some parallels -- Bill Press.

PRESS: Bill McCollum, a lot of talk now, the apartment' been searched, the next big thing is the polygraph which most people for Gary Condit -- most people don't mention, in saying that there are three other men, according to the D.C. police, who knew Miss Levy who have been asked to take a polygraph test as well.

Wouldn't you have to agree that the fact that Gary Condit is not the only one certainly diminishes the significance of his being asked take a polygraph?

MCCOLLUM: Well, I think it is important that he take the polygraph.

PRESS: I do, too.

MCCOLLUM: I think the fact that he is a public figure, he should have perhaps come forward and volunteered to do this earlier. It would have been smart for him to do. I think the politics of this has been horrible for him, but I think the public misunderstands the scope of this investigation. I think they tend to presume that he is guilty of something because the way he behaved. Now he has caused that problem. He has caused that problem for himself, because he wasn't forthcoming at the beginning.

But this is, by the way, by no means the parallel directly to the magnitude of say the impeachment trial of President Clinton's issues. There are parallels here, but not to that degree.

PRESS: So again, he is one of four that we know of, maybe more, who have been asked to take a polygraph test. He's not being singled out in that way. Plus you have got a test which is not admissible in court because it is considered not to be an accurate measure of whether one is telling the truth or not.

So really, this polygraph test, as interested as we are in it, really a public relations thing for the cops and for the family. It doesn't mean beans, does it?

MCCOLLUM: Well, it does mean beans. Polygraph tests have some validity. As I said earlier, I chaired the Crime Subcommittee for a number of years, and I know that there are inaccuracies in polygraphs, but police use them regularly. People use them, as much as anything else, to try to help rule out suspects or to make sure they got all the facts right as much as possible.

Can they be used as evidence? Not necessarily, but to further an investigation looking for a missing person, a pretty darn important item.

BREUER: Bill, if I may, I mean, asking for a polygraph is a fairly extraordinary measure. And it is, I think, a useful tool. But it is clear here that in part it happened because Abbe Lowell, Mr. Condit's lawyer, said he would consider the issue. And that is why now the polygraph has become a big issue. And to that degree it is of course public relations.

I represent lots of individuals in criminal matters and I was a prosecutor in New York. It is highly unusual for prosecutors or investigators to ask for a polygraph to be taken, and it's even more unusual in a missing persons matter. So I think we need to understand this, because of the press interest here that that is occurring now.

NOVAK: Let me follow this up, the sequence of events. Miss Levy's parents say he should take a polygraph, then last Friday night Abbe Lowell has a press conference at just about this hour, right in middle of CROSSFIRE it came right on, and he said yes, we will do that. And the police have a press conference on Saturday night. They say yes, we are going to -- we want a polygraph.

And now, Abbe Lowell is welshing. He's not saying, well, I'm not sure about the question, I'm not sure when, I'm not sure why. It seems to me, if I could concoct the worst sequence of events for Mr. Condit, I would say the performance of his lawyer Abbe Lowell in this case. I know all you guys stick together, but that -- he looks pretty bad, doesn't he?

BREUER: I think Abbe Lowell's a great lawyer.

NOVAK: I'm sure you do.

BREUER: And I really think he is trying do a very fine job for his client here. As I recall, and you may be correct, and I may not, but as I recall he didn't say that his client would take a polygraph, he said he would consider it...

NOVAK: Aww, that's lawyer...

BREUER: Let me just finish -- and in the same way he said that he said he would consider other things and what has he done? He's opened up the apartment already and he's considering the polygraph. But don't think that a polygraph is manna from heaven and every question is going to lead to a good answer.

MCCOLLUM: But Abbe Lowell is doing spin. That's what we call it. When Clinton was on the firing line he had a lot of people doing spin. In this case the bad part for Gary Condit is that he only has one person really doing spin.

But the other side of this, too, is there's a sad feature here, and that is that we see the police really reacting to this public -- very public thing, and a missing persons case, and there are hundreds of others like this out there where they're not reacting.

NOVAK: I'd like you to see a little spin, 1998 vintage, by the honorable Gary Condit, Democrat of California, in regards to the difficulties of President Clinton.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. GARY CONDIT (D), CALIFORNIA: The fact is, is the information is going to get out eventually anyway. Let's just do it all at once, see where the chips fall. And then lets get on to making the decision about what we're going to do about what we think happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOVAK: What does that tell us about Gary Condit?

BREUER: That I bet today Gary Condit wishes he hadn't said that a couple years ago. I mean, look, obviously Congressman Condit now understands how difficult being in the front of a huge public issue is. And right now, Congressman Condit has to decide himself how much he is willing to say in a public forum. But of course he can't be happy that he made those comments about President Clinton a few years ago.

PRESS: Bill McCollum, so now the latest judge is that Gary Condit -- maybe he didn't anything criminal, he didn't do anything illegal in having an affair, but he might have suborned perjury, and that's based on this affidavit.

MCCOLLUM: Right.

PRESS: I want to ask you about this. So this an affidavit -- this is a draft that's sent from lawyer to lawyer -- not from Gary Condit to this flight attendant -- from his lawyer to her lawyer, and at the top it says "this is a draft and you can omit, delete, make any changes you want and e-mail it back to me."

How in the hell can that be suborning perjury?

MCCOLLUM: Well, I don't know that it is, but we again are not privy to all the details. I would suggest, to you -- well, first of all, that is right to look into it. And second of all, that it may very well be one of those things that they don't go anywhere with.

But one of the things that's really missing here, Bill, is information, generally. We have a lot of stuff we're assuming. That's one of the reasons we're here saying how can you go as far as you can? We, just on the other side of the coin, while we're saying, by golly, we shouldn't be coming to conclusions that Condit committed crimes, we also don't know enough to exonerate him either, for sure.

PRESS: But I tell you what we do know a lot about. We're learning more and more about Gary Condit's sex life. Now, I said on this show I don't care Dan Burton's sex life. I have to tell you, I don't care about Gary Condit's either. But I've heard today -- watching the news, OK -- all about the flight attendant. Now there's this other woman from Central California who says she was given his phone number. We're not sure -- she never said whether they had sex or not. I heard on another channel a little earlier that pretty soon there'll be names of other women that he had affairs with.

Can you tell me how this, in any way, helps find Chandra Levy?

MCCOLLUM: It doesn't, Bill. It's a feeding frenzy, and it's unfortunate that the media, of which you are a party and to the degree I'm here tonight, we're all a party...

PRESS: Plead guilty.

MCCOLLUM: The problem is that it's the type of thing people buy in the print. It sells, it markets, it's there, it's salacious, and it's unfortunate, because whether we agree with his behavior -- and I don't -- that is not what is really at stake here. It's the missing woman that's at stake. It's the possibility of foul play that's at stake, it's getting to the bottom of this that's important. And it's very, very unfortunate that this is -- like this.

NOVAK: If he is a serial philanderer, it doesn't help his case.

MCCOLLUM: No, it doesn't, politically.

BREUER: Well, it certainly doesn't help him, politically, and as Bill describes it, that is not, cannot be suborning perjury.

PRESS: It's a he said, she said case.

NOVAK: Not exactly.

PRESS: Bill McCollum, good to have you back on CROSSFIRE. Thank you very much.

MCCOLLUM: Thank you.

PRESS: Lanny Breuer, nice to have you here at CROSSFIRE. Want to get you back again.

BREUER: Thank you for having me.

PRESS: ... maybe even in this topic -- who knows?

Is there anything more to say about the Gary Condit case? You bet! Bob Novak and I will be back with those closing comments, coming right up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOVAK: Bill, since the story started coming, unraveling a couple weeks ago, there is nothing happened that has helped Gary Condit, whether he tried to get this woman to sign the affidavit, the revelations of serial philandering, the fact that he misled police -- every day in every little way it looks worse for him. Not that he did any -- committed any crime, but he looks terrible. PRESS: I agree he looks terrible. I agree he brought a lot of that on himself by not being more forthright in the beginning, as he should have been. I mean, he should have learned something from what happened three years ago.

But you know what I think this really is, Bob? I think the media sees -- they had so much fun with Monica, it was wall to wall Monica. Now they want it to be wall to wall Gary Condit...

NOVAK: Let me disagree with you.

PRESS: ... and Chandra Levy.

NOVAK: If your friend Gary Condit, Democrat from California, didn't lie, didn't try to hide things, he wouldn't be in the jam he is today.

PRESS: They'd still be talking about his sex life.

NOVAK: No.

PRESS: From the left, I'm Bill Press.

NOVAK: He did have a big sex life.

PRESS: Good night from CROSSFIRE.

NOVAK: From the right, I'm Robert Novak. Join us again next time for another edition of CROSSFIRE!

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