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CNN Novak, Hunt & Shields

Interview With Fred Thompson

Aired July 13, 2002 - 17:30   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.
ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: I'm Robert Novak. Al Hunt and I will question a prominent U.S. senator in his last months of service before leaving the Senate.

AL HUNT, CO-HOST: He is Republican Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HUNT (voice-over): President Bush's call for tough action against corporate corruption did not impress Senate Democrats.

SEN. JON CORZINE (D), NEW JERSEY: Nothing in detail was talked about. Nothing was talked about with regard to stock options or Bermuda corporations, things that are real with regard to the substance of what is undermining the confidence we have in our economy today.

SEN. TRENT LOTT (R-MS), MINORITY LEADER: The president asked for this to happen in March, for action in this area -- March, March, March, hear me? The House acted in April, April the 24th. The Senate discovers the issue a couple of weeks ago.

HUNT: The Senate this week unanimously voted anti- corporate fraud measures going beyond the administration's proposals, but the momentum slowed when a vote was block on Senator John McCain's proposed tougher treatment of stock options.

Fred D. Thompson burst on the national political scene in 1973 at age 31 as chief Republican counsel in the nationally televised Watergate hearings. His face became even more familiar as an actor in 18 motion pictures.

In 1994, he was elected to the United States Senate. As chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, he led an investigation into President Bill Clinton's campaign financing. In March, Senator Thompson announced he will not seek reelection this year.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HUNT: Senator, President Bush tried to get out in front on the corporate corruption scandals. The market reaction, initially at least, was quite negative. Are the president's proposals adequate? SEN. FRED THOMPSON (R), TENNESSEE: I think they are. I think what you're seeing now is a wallowing around in a basket full of proposals. The House has done a bill. We're working on a bill. We'll pass it overwhelmingly, probably first of next week. It'll go to conference. The president has his own ideas.

We're going to come up with some changes, most of which probably should have been made a long time ago. But we're in the process now a little bit of a stampede where probably some bad ideas, along with some good ones are going to be considered, hopefully not passed at the end of the day.

But we went a long time without doing anything here, and now we're trying to do everything. So hopefully we'll slow down long enough to, you know, to do it right. And I think the president's approach is a reasonable one.

HUNT: What are some bad ideas that shouldn't be passed?

THOMPSON: Well, anything that micro-manages the way corporations are run in the boardroom in America.

I think without question there has been excesses. We set back and most of us nearly grumble at the idea of corporate compensation and severance packages in the millions of dollars, even when the corporation was failing and not having compensation tied to performance and all that.

But most of us realize it would be even worse if Congress started setting exactly what people could make or not make in private America. So I think we have to be careful about things like that.

We don't want to make penalties so Draconian for future people who are accused of misconduct that you can't get people to serve on a board of directors, for example. Things of that nature.

HUNT: Your colleague John McCain has called on SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt, a former lawyer/lobbyist for the accounting profession, to step down. Said that he may be a good man but he lacks credibility to really reassure investors at this critical time.

Do you think Harvey Pitt should go?

THOMPSON: No. I don't think that he's been given enough of an opportunity really to address some of these issues.

I think he said some things in the beginning of his tenure that he probably wishes that he hadn't said. But Congress didn't have much of a reaction to them. This was all before the corporate scandals hit.

I think that it was well known that he had these ties to the accounting industry. It was known when he approved him, I think unanimously, that he would probably have to recuse himself on some of these things. So we're engaging in a little bit of 20/20 hindsight here, as far as he's concerned. He's going to have to prove that -- and he shouldn't have met, I think, privately with some of the folks that he met with who turned out to be under investigation. So he's going to have to prove himself, but he needs to be given that opportunity.

We're not going to solve this problem by firing people who've just been put on the job and not given an opportunity to address the issues.

NOVAK: In connection with the bad ideas, Senator Thompson, are you afraid that this frenzy on the Hill is contributing to the drag- down of the market and, in fact, is having some long-range, bad effects on the economy?

THOMPSON: Well, not yet, Bob. I think there could be a danger of that if, at the end of the day, we wound up with some of these things that I just mentioned.

I think, short term, it's probably having some effect, but probably smaller than the overall uncertainty that people see with these accounting procedures and what some of these big corporations are doing. I think that's probably the main drain on the market.

But if we come along, and in this election year, in all of our zeal, having been dormant for a long, long time in these areas, and come in without committee hearings on these issues, without understanding the effect of some of these proposals, and come in with Draconian measures that are really over the top, because of what some other people have already done who may be tried and go to jail, that would be a mistake, and that would have long-term detriment.

NOVAK: Senator, as a side issue, President Bush has come under fire for some stock transactions he made as a private citizen long ago. Vice President Cheney under fire for some decisions he may have made as CEO of Halliburton.

Do you think, just to clear the air, both the president and vice president ought to lay out all the information about these transactions?

THOMPSON: Well, I thought that had been done. I'm not familiar with the details of it. I do know that any of us who have ever been in private life come to town with a certain amount of, if not baggage, certain things that people can make issues of.

My understanding of it is that this has been talked about and investigated for 12 years, since the president was in private life. I saw in The Washington Post today, they editorialized and said, you know, "We're being unfair to the president to try to politicize this after all this time and after the SEC has found no wrongdoing." So that seems like a reasonable assessment to me.

I don't know what's been disclosed or not disclosed, but obviously, you know, if they want to lay some additional documents out on the table, that's fine with me. NOVAK: You've had a lot of experience investigating presidents -- Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton. Think we need a special prosecutor to clear the air here?

THOMPSON: No, no. Surely, we haven't come to the point where we don't at least need some allegations of wrongdoing before we start talking about a special prosecutor. And I've not heard any of those yet.

HUNT: Senator Thompson, you are the ranking Republican on the Senate committee looking at the president's proposal for a homeland security agency. Over in the House, it appears this proposal, at least it looks like, it's unraveling. Various House committees have voted against putting Secret Service, INS, FEMA, Livermore Labs and Coast Guard into any new homeland security agency, all of which the White House requested.

Why is that? Was this a hastily assembled, ill-considered proposal?

THOMPSON: I don't think it was ill-considered. I think it was probably put together more rapidly than was ideal. And therefore, it's going to take a little time to figure all these issues out.

These are all legitimate issues. We're bringing a lot of agencies and entities that have homeland-security functions in the same department, but they also have non-homeland-security functions.

HUNT: Do you disagree with most of those House actions?

THOMPSON: From what I have seen, I think that the overriding consideration is to give the administration a chance to make this work, set it up along the lines -- if there is an argument on either side, give them the benefit of the doubt, give them an opportunity.

They've got tremendous accountability and responsibility here. Give them enough flexibility. The new person coming in would be crazy to take this job without substantial flexibility, in terms of hiring people and pay and that sort of thing. They need all of that.

I read what these corporate CEOs are telling us, there's a 20 percent chance that this is going to work. They've seen corporate mergers fail before. We can't let that happen. This has got to work.

And we shouldn't be picking too much around the edges of this. While they're reasonable proposals, nobody knows how it's going to work, nobody knows whether something should be in or out. Everybody has their own views.

At the end of the day, this is going to be on the president's doorstep and this administration. So they ought to be given an opportunity, the best shot that they have to make their plan work, and then have the accountability for doing that.

NOVAK: Senator, a couple of quick questions before we take a break. Do you think that the CIA and the FBI should stay where they are, as is proposed by the president?

THOMPSON: I don't know, Bob, but I'll tell you this. I am very concerned about our intelligence community. Our counterintelligence capabilities, our counterterrorism capabilities are not what they should be. There needs to be major reform in the CIA and the FBI.

I don't think we need to do it in this bill, because I don't think we've got time. But I think after we do this, we need to go back and ask those questions, ask whether or not part of the FBI perhaps should be into this new entity, or a whole new entity along the British lines should be created.

Those are all very legitimate issues and questions. They are big issues, I think just as important as the homeland security bill. But I think that will have to be addressed next year.

NOVAK: We have to take a break, but when we come back, we'll ask Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee if America is really safer now than it was on September 11.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: Senator, in response to the earlier question, you seemed to indicate that we may be just as threatened today by terrorism, because of the FBI and CIA deficiencies, as we were last September 11. Is that right?

THOMPSON: You don't turn around agencies like that overnight. We're in the beginning stages, I think, of instituting some reforms, but the very beginning of it.

I think that we're incrementally safer. I think that we're somewhat safer. I'm not sure the exact word to put on it.

But I think the American people need to understand that we're never going to be totally safe. There are too many potential terrorists out there. They have too many means of destruction at their disposal, in terms of chemical, nuclear, biological, whatever, or things that we perhaps don't even know about yet.

And we have too many facilities to protect. You know, 90, 95 percent of our infrastructure is in private hands to start with. So it's not just a federal protection issue, it's a state and local protection issue, and every bridge and highway and port and whatnot is at issue.

So I expect future attacks, and I expect, even if the government does everything we could possibly expect of our government, we're not ever going to be totally safe. And we need to have the mindset to be able to deal with that and get through that.

HUNT: Do you think we would be safer if we mount an attack and toppled Saddam Hussein, even if it took several hundred thousand American troops?

THOMPSON: That very well could be the case, because part of what we've got to do, and I think really kind of the add-on to what I just said, is that we have got to be proactive in some areas.

That doesn't mean willy-nilly going around the world and bombing people, but it does mean that if we have identified an entity that has shown the means and capability and desire to do us harm and that they're in the process of getting the capability to do that, that we've got to reach out and touch someone. And that very well may be what's happening with regard to Iraq today.

NOVAK: Senator Thompson, you've been part of the joint committee investigating the September 11 terrorist attack as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Based on this investigation so far, do you think in the future an outside investigation, as Senator McCain and others have proposed, is necessary?

THOMPSON: Bob, I still haven't totally concluded that yet, but I'm still entertaining it. I think a lot depends on what we're able to do in the committee. I think that there's a reasonable possibility that at the end of the day we will not have had time enough, that we will not had sufficient number of people, that we in some cases might not have even had sufficient cooperation or motivation of the people that we're looking at to really be able to say that we have gotten a handle on this thing.

9/11's important, what happened is important. But even more important than that is understanding our deficiencies and understanding enough to make the reforms that are necessary. That's a big job.

And getting a few documents from these agencies, depending on what they want to give us, without the chance to follow up and without the chance to really be rigorous with them, knowing that we've got this deadline that we imposed on ourselves, is not...

(CROSSTALK)

THOMPSON: Yes, I'm skeptical. But only the right kind of commission. We don't need another commission just to investigate 9/11. We need an entity -- and this could come out of the White House -- but we need an entity to take a broad look at the deficiencies and requirements of our intelligence community.

NOVAK: Senator, we've just got another minute before a break. You were engaged in a very bipartisan investigation years ago, Watergate. You were engaged in a very partisan investigation, without much bipartisan cooperation, when you chaired the hearings on the Clinton campaign finance scandal.

Which is this intelligence investigation? Is it more like Watergate or more like the Clinton campaign finance scandal?

THOMPSON: Well, it's bipartisan. So far most of it has been behind closed doors, as you know, of necessity.

NOVAK: That's why I asked.

THOMPSON: But the big distinction here is that the president is not in the dock. When you have the president in the dock anymore -- in other words, he's being accused of some kind of impropriety -- all the Republicans rally over here and all the Democrats rally over here. That's the big difference between today and Watergate. We had some people like Howard Baker and Sam Ervin back in those days who got together and tried to do the right thing. It seems to be more difficult for us to do that today. So I don't think the Intelligence Committee is a good example. The best example would be one when you have the president under fire, such as Bill Clinton was. And I don't think we can do a Watergate- type investigation anymore, the way things are today.

NOVAK: We're going to take another break, and when we come back, we'll have "The Big Question" for Fred Thompson.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOVAK: "The Big Question" for Senator Fred Thompson:

Senator, both you and Congressman J.C. Watts shocked Washington by saying you were quitting after just eight years in Congress. Do you think maybe eight years is a good length of time for a term limit, either by statute or practice?

THOMPSON: I don't know about the eight years, but I still think term limits is a good idea. It's not all good. We'd lose some good people. But I think it would open it up for other people.

And nowadays, you know, you need to really go hard at it for a more limited period of time, I think, and then turn it over to somebody else. That was always my intention. And I think, all in all, it would be good for the country.

We're not suffering from a lack of expertise. We've got a lot of good, smart people with a lot of expertise. What we're suffering from is a lack of willpower to do some of these things like reforming entitlement programs and things like that that we need to do that are politically extremely difficult. But it makes it more difficult when you are making a career out of the job.

HUNT: Senator, increasingly divisive primary to succeed you in Tennessee -- it's going to be held next month -- between Lamar Alexander and Congressman Ed Bryant. During the presidential campaign, you endorsed Lamar Alexander. Are you going to endorse him in the next two and a half weeks?

THOMPSON: I feel like that what my primary concern and focus ought to be is helping a successor.

HUNT: So you're not going to endorse?

THOMPSON: I'm not going to endorse anyone. I have the greatest respect for Lamar. I have worked with Ed Bryant, and I have respect for Ed for sure.

HUNT: We have 10 seconds left, Senator. You just got married. You broke a lot of hearts. Are you going to go back to being a heartthrob again when you get out of the Senate by going back to Hollywood and in the movies?

THOMPSON: I only wish. I only wish.

(LAUGHTER)

Now, a bit actor maybe on occasion, but that will be at most an avocation. But it's a fun one when you can get the work.

NOVAK: Thank you very much.

THOMPSON: Appreciate it.

NOVAK: Appreciate it.

Al Hunt and I will be back with a comment after these messages.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: Bob, Fred Thompson, I thought, was chilling in his analysis of the FBI and CIA. He said we may be safer than last September 11, but only barely. And there has to be a humongous cultural shift there that hasn't really begun yet, according to him.

NOVAK: You know, the senator, I thought, was very prudent in saying that the Congress could go too far on these reforms and trying to crack down on the corporate corruptors and hurt business, because that's something I hear from the business community very much, that there's a feeding frenzy on Capitol Hill.

HUNT: Well, I think they ought to feed away, but I'll tell you this: Whether I think Fred's right or wrong on that, he practices the only kind of term limits I'm for, which is voluntary. He's had a great eight-year run. I wish he were here for another six. We're going to miss him.

NOVAK: The problem with that, Al, is there's very few people like Fred Thompson and J.C. Watts who are prudent enough to get out after eight years. That's why you need mandatory time limits. What a wonderful Congress it would be if we could wipe out all that dead wood. It'd be just wonderful.

I'm Robert Novak.

HUNT: And I'm Al Hunt.

Coming up at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on "THE CAPITAL GANG": The president threatens business leaders with severe consequences, but Mr. Bush and Vice President Cheney come under fire for past practices; our newsmaker of the week, Michigan Governor John Engler; and a tough summer ahead for the national pastime, with our guest, ESPN baseball expert Peter Gammons.

NOVAK: That's all for now. Thanks for joining us.

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