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Bush Administration Fires Back on State of the Union Questions; Bush Meets With U.N. Secretary-General

Aired July 14, 2003 - 15:00   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.


JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Some colorful language today from the president and his team, as critics continue to question the credibility of his prewar statements on Iraq. Overall, Mr. Bush says, the quality of intelligence that he receives is -- "darn good." And his outgoing press secretary, Ari Fleischer, suggested the controversy is -- quote -- "a bunch of bull."
Let's check in with our White House correspondent Dana Bash.

Dana, the president did comment on this just a short time ago. What's he saying?

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the president meeting, as you said, with Kofi Anna, the U.N. secretary-general. The two men hadn't met since December since, of course, the U.S. and the U.N. had some issues over the war with Iraq.

The two men did discuss the issue of Iraq and postwar Iraq and how that country can be rebuilt more quickly. But the president was asked a couple of times about that one line in the president's State of the Union speech that the White House, just one week ago, said should not have been in there. The president, as you said, maintains that the intelligence that he gets is good and the intelligence that he got before the speech was good, regardless of the fact that some intelligence officials have made clear that they knew way before January that, perhaps, it was dubious.

Let's listen to the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The speech that I gave was cleared by the CIA. And, look, the thing that's important to realize is that we're constantly gathering data. Subsequent to the speech, the CIA had some doubts. But when I gave the -- when they talked about the speech, when they looked at the speech, it was cleared. Otherwise, I wouldn't have put it in the speech. I'm not interested in talking about intelligence unless it's cleared by the CIA.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now, the broader point that the president made a couple of times is the same that his aides have been making over the past 24 hours or so, which is that, regardless of this particular 16 words in the president's speech, he believes that the justification for war against Iraq still stands.

He believes that Saddam Hussein did have a weapons program, perhaps was trying to reconstitute his nuclear program. So the line from the president, a couple of times, was to take a more broad look at this, that he is confident in his decision to go to war against Iraq, regardless of one line in his State of the Union address that may or may not have been accurate -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: Dana, did the White House basically believe that, once they put the blame on the CIA and that CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged responsibility, did they basically think that was going to be the end of this?

BASH: Judy, they were hoping that it was going to be the end of this. As a matter of fact, Ari Fleischer, a couple of days ago, said case closed. Even today, he said: We've gotten to the bottom of it. It's over.

They are trying to put this behind them. But they are still being dogged by questions, not only from the media, but, of course, from Democrats, even some Democrats who supported the president in the war against Iraq saying that this is a credibility issue. So, as much as they try, they are getting questioned about it. Ari Fleischer, Judy, as you probably saw in his last briefing before he leaves his post, was asked about it in a pretty contentious way time and time again, asked a lot of questions about it.

So it is clearly not going away immediately. But the White House was hoping and is still hoping that by saying the intelligence sort of fell on their swords, so to speak, that they're hoping that this could pass.

WOODRUFF: I guess Ari Fleischer earned his pay on his last day on the job.

OK, Dana, thank you very much.

Well, the Bush administration's strategy in dealing with the WMD intelligence controversy has been something of a work in progress. The latest line of defense emerged this weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I'm told that the statement in the president's speech was correct, not inaccurate, the way it was phrased. The mistake was having it in there, not because it is known that it was wrong, but because it didn't rise to the stature or status of a presidential speech.

And Director Tenet, who is a terrific public servant and a very talented person, put out a statement that answered the whole question. And it seems to me, the president and he have both clarified that. The British say that they believe it is accurate. And they may very well prove to be the case. We'll just have to wait and see.

(END VIDEO CLIP) WOODRUFF: Well, let's talk about the administration's evolving response and all the fallout with Matt Cooper. He is White House correspondent for "TIME" magazine.

Matt, why didn't George Tenet's acknowledgment that it was his responsibility put an end to all this?

MATT COOPER, "TIME": Well, it doesn't just because the White House says it should.

Look, there are still questions about how it got in the speech. I mean, the White House is kind of treating it like it was immaculately conceived, like it just somehow kind of landed in the speech and no one really pushed for it. We don't really quite fully understand how it got in there. We have a couple of inferences.

And, look, I don't think they have probably helped themselves by having this short of changing line. At first, it was really no problem this was in. Then they said, oh, it shouldn't have been in the speech. Now they're saying, well, it shouldn't have been in the speech, but it was right. I think, when they get their stories straight, eventually, this will start to calm down.

WOODRUFF: Well, if it was CIA officials who successfully urged the White House not to leave this language in a speech the president gave in October, which was three months before the State of the Union, and it was CIA officials who were arguing, as they worked up to the State of the Union, it shouldn't be in there, then who was urging that it be in?

COOPER: Well, that's the question we don't fully understand. We know that, at one point, the CIA met with a member of Condi Rice's national security team who said -- well -- who muttered the now kind of infamous line, well, if we attribute it to the British, is that OK? And, at that point, the CIA kind of threw up its hands and said, fine.

But we don't fully know if there were others who were pushing to put it in the speech. So those things remain to be seen. Look, the bottom line is here, did they lie? No. Did they hype the nuclear evidence against Saddam? Clearly.

WOODRUFF: Well, when the White House -- we heard Ari Fleischer today basically -- and others -- say, this was never the main reason for going to war. And yet I think many of us heard the White House saying it was the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction. So what's the disconnect here?

COOPER: Well, yes. I think there's a little bit of revisionist history going on at the White House. I mean, clearly, they made many cases for war: one, that he hadn't lived up his commitments to the United Nations; second, that he was a bully and a tyrant; and third, and most importantly, that he had weapons of mass destruction and was -- or was seeking to acquire more and that either he would use them or give them to terrorists who would use them.

And the scariest of those weapons of mass destruction threats was the nuclear one.

WOODRUFF: Sure.

COOPER: And that's the one that got the most hype. Ironically, I think if they had stuck with where the evidence was most solid, biological and chemical weapons, they would have been on more solid ground and would have avoided this controversy.

WOODRUFF: Is any head, do you think, going to roll over this, whether it's Tenet or anybody else?

COOPER: I think it's possible that, at some lower level, you might see a head roll, or you might see Tenet leave in six months. He's been there six years. He served under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, so he's done a long tour already. And he might go at some point. But I don't see a big-name firing coming out of this.

WOODRUFF: If you could get inside the White House and get a question answered, what would it be? Presumably, who was pushing this at the end?

COOPER: Well, I think that's the question, Judy, right. I mean, who kept kind of insisting, hey, let's get this line in there, and if we have to say credit to the British, let's keep getting it in? And that, we don't know.

We learned some things in our "TIME" cover story this week. We learned, for instance, that Dick Cheney really, when first presented with some of this conflicting evidence about Iraqis trying to get uranium from Africa, raised an eyebrow and asked to hear more about it. So we know the vice president expressed an interest, but we don't really know who kept wanting to get this into different speeches.

WOODRUFF: All right, Matt Cooper, "TIME" magazine. And he was, as he just mentioned, one of the authors of "TIME"'s cover story this week on this whole story.

Matt, thanks very much.

COOPER: Thanks, Judy.

Well, in addition to talking about postwar Iraq, President Bush and U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan discussed the crisis in Liberia. Annan has pushed hard for U.S. intervention in that West African nation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: I told the secretary general that we want to help, that there must be a U.N. presence quickly into Liberia. He and I discussed how fast it would take to blue-helmet whatever forces arrived, other than our own, of course. We would not be blue- helmeted. We would be there to facilitate and then to leave. And we had a good discussion. And I think we had a meeting of minds on that subject.

(END VIDEO CLIP) WOODRUFF: President Bush says U.S. troops may be required in Liberia, but he still doesn't have all the facts, he says. And he says he hopes to make a decision as soon as possible. And he made it clear that a deployment would be conditional on Liberian president Charles Taylor stepping aside.

Let's check in now with our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre.

Jamie, what about what the president and the secretary-general had to say? How much closer are we, if at all, to U.S. troops going in as peacekeepers?

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, the timetable's not clear, Judy, but I think we got a much clearer indication from both the president and Kofi Annan that -- about sort of how this deployment would work.

The United States, as President Bush said, is committed to support the peacekeeping effort, but we saw that Secretary Annan said that, under the plans discussed now, there be a vanguard, he called it, of between 500 and 1,000 West African peacekeeping troops that would go in. Then they would be supported by the United States in a support capacity. And following that, the mission would transition into a U.N. blue-helmet mission.

Now, President Bush said that he has not yet made a decision, because he needs to get a report back from the U.S. assessment team about exactly what's needed. But he did say it would be a definite mission with a limited tenure, he said, in other words, that there would be a definite date in which the United States would be withdrawing from Liberia, so a limited role. It looks like the U.S. is tending more toward a support role, rather than front-line peacekeeping forces, and still no decision made by the White House.

And I should mention also that the U.S.-European command has dispatched about 100 additional troops, along with some helicopters and a C-130 airplane. That's to provide additional support to the assessment team that's on the ground there now, particularly if they had to leave in a hurry. There would be the forces there to get them out. But, right now, things are fairly stable and they're continuing their work -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: So, Jamie, it's just a matter of continuing to assess this thing before the decision is made?

MCINTYRE: Yes. I think, clearly, we saw from President Bush that the U.S. is going to participate.

But it is conditional on Charles Taylor leaving. It is conditional on the limited role and a limited timeframe for the U.S. troops. And there are still some details that need to be worked out. And it's pretty clear at this point that the U.S. is not talking about, as I said, having front-line peacekeeping forces, but more in a support and logistics role for the West African nations.

WOODRUFF: All right, Jamie McIntyre, thanks very much.

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





Questions; Bush Meets With U.N. Secretary-General>


Aired July 14, 2003 - 15:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Some colorful language today from the president and his team, as critics continue to question the credibility of his prewar statements on Iraq. Overall, Mr. Bush says, the quality of intelligence that he receives is -- "darn good." And his outgoing press secretary, Ari Fleischer, suggested the controversy is -- quote -- "a bunch of bull."
Let's check in with our White House correspondent Dana Bash.

Dana, the president did comment on this just a short time ago. What's he saying?

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the president meeting, as you said, with Kofi Anna, the U.N. secretary-general. The two men hadn't met since December since, of course, the U.S. and the U.N. had some issues over the war with Iraq.

The two men did discuss the issue of Iraq and postwar Iraq and how that country can be rebuilt more quickly. But the president was asked a couple of times about that one line in the president's State of the Union speech that the White House, just one week ago, said should not have been in there. The president, as you said, maintains that the intelligence that he gets is good and the intelligence that he got before the speech was good, regardless of the fact that some intelligence officials have made clear that they knew way before January that, perhaps, it was dubious.

Let's listen to the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The speech that I gave was cleared by the CIA. And, look, the thing that's important to realize is that we're constantly gathering data. Subsequent to the speech, the CIA had some doubts. But when I gave the -- when they talked about the speech, when they looked at the speech, it was cleared. Otherwise, I wouldn't have put it in the speech. I'm not interested in talking about intelligence unless it's cleared by the CIA.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now, the broader point that the president made a couple of times is the same that his aides have been making over the past 24 hours or so, which is that, regardless of this particular 16 words in the president's speech, he believes that the justification for war against Iraq still stands.

He believes that Saddam Hussein did have a weapons program, perhaps was trying to reconstitute his nuclear program. So the line from the president, a couple of times, was to take a more broad look at this, that he is confident in his decision to go to war against Iraq, regardless of one line in his State of the Union address that may or may not have been accurate -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: Dana, did the White House basically believe that, once they put the blame on the CIA and that CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged responsibility, did they basically think that was going to be the end of this?

BASH: Judy, they were hoping that it was going to be the end of this. As a matter of fact, Ari Fleischer, a couple of days ago, said case closed. Even today, he said: We've gotten to the bottom of it. It's over.

They are trying to put this behind them. But they are still being dogged by questions, not only from the media, but, of course, from Democrats, even some Democrats who supported the president in the war against Iraq saying that this is a credibility issue. So, as much as they try, they are getting questioned about it. Ari Fleischer, Judy, as you probably saw in his last briefing before he leaves his post, was asked about it in a pretty contentious way time and time again, asked a lot of questions about it.

So it is clearly not going away immediately. But the White House was hoping and is still hoping that by saying the intelligence sort of fell on their swords, so to speak, that they're hoping that this could pass.

WOODRUFF: I guess Ari Fleischer earned his pay on his last day on the job.

OK, Dana, thank you very much.

Well, the Bush administration's strategy in dealing with the WMD intelligence controversy has been something of a work in progress. The latest line of defense emerged this weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I'm told that the statement in the president's speech was correct, not inaccurate, the way it was phrased. The mistake was having it in there, not because it is known that it was wrong, but because it didn't rise to the stature or status of a presidential speech.

And Director Tenet, who is a terrific public servant and a very talented person, put out a statement that answered the whole question. And it seems to me, the president and he have both clarified that. The British say that they believe it is accurate. And they may very well prove to be the case. We'll just have to wait and see.

(END VIDEO CLIP) WOODRUFF: Well, let's talk about the administration's evolving response and all the fallout with Matt Cooper. He is White House correspondent for "TIME" magazine.

Matt, why didn't George Tenet's acknowledgment that it was his responsibility put an end to all this?

MATT COOPER, "TIME": Well, it doesn't just because the White House says it should.

Look, there are still questions about how it got in the speech. I mean, the White House is kind of treating it like it was immaculately conceived, like it just somehow kind of landed in the speech and no one really pushed for it. We don't really quite fully understand how it got in there. We have a couple of inferences.

And, look, I don't think they have probably helped themselves by having this short of changing line. At first, it was really no problem this was in. Then they said, oh, it shouldn't have been in the speech. Now they're saying, well, it shouldn't have been in the speech, but it was right. I think, when they get their stories straight, eventually, this will start to calm down.

WOODRUFF: Well, if it was CIA officials who successfully urged the White House not to leave this language in a speech the president gave in October, which was three months before the State of the Union, and it was CIA officials who were arguing, as they worked up to the State of the Union, it shouldn't be in there, then who was urging that it be in?

COOPER: Well, that's the question we don't fully understand. We know that, at one point, the CIA met with a member of Condi Rice's national security team who said -- well -- who muttered the now kind of infamous line, well, if we attribute it to the British, is that OK? And, at that point, the CIA kind of threw up its hands and said, fine.

But we don't fully know if there were others who were pushing to put it in the speech. So those things remain to be seen. Look, the bottom line is here, did they lie? No. Did they hype the nuclear evidence against Saddam? Clearly.

WOODRUFF: Well, when the White House -- we heard Ari Fleischer today basically -- and others -- say, this was never the main reason for going to war. And yet I think many of us heard the White House saying it was the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction. So what's the disconnect here?

COOPER: Well, yes. I think there's a little bit of revisionist history going on at the White House. I mean, clearly, they made many cases for war: one, that he hadn't lived up his commitments to the United Nations; second, that he was a bully and a tyrant; and third, and most importantly, that he had weapons of mass destruction and was -- or was seeking to acquire more and that either he would use them or give them to terrorists who would use them.

And the scariest of those weapons of mass destruction threats was the nuclear one.

WOODRUFF: Sure.

COOPER: And that's the one that got the most hype. Ironically, I think if they had stuck with where the evidence was most solid, biological and chemical weapons, they would have been on more solid ground and would have avoided this controversy.

WOODRUFF: Is any head, do you think, going to roll over this, whether it's Tenet or anybody else?

COOPER: I think it's possible that, at some lower level, you might see a head roll, or you might see Tenet leave in six months. He's been there six years. He served under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, so he's done a long tour already. And he might go at some point. But I don't see a big-name firing coming out of this.

WOODRUFF: If you could get inside the White House and get a question answered, what would it be? Presumably, who was pushing this at the end?

COOPER: Well, I think that's the question, Judy, right. I mean, who kept kind of insisting, hey, let's get this line in there, and if we have to say credit to the British, let's keep getting it in? And that, we don't know.

We learned some things in our "TIME" cover story this week. We learned, for instance, that Dick Cheney really, when first presented with some of this conflicting evidence about Iraqis trying to get uranium from Africa, raised an eyebrow and asked to hear more about it. So we know the vice president expressed an interest, but we don't really know who kept wanting to get this into different speeches.

WOODRUFF: All right, Matt Cooper, "TIME" magazine. And he was, as he just mentioned, one of the authors of "TIME"'s cover story this week on this whole story.

Matt, thanks very much.

COOPER: Thanks, Judy.

Well, in addition to talking about postwar Iraq, President Bush and U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan discussed the crisis in Liberia. Annan has pushed hard for U.S. intervention in that West African nation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: I told the secretary general that we want to help, that there must be a U.N. presence quickly into Liberia. He and I discussed how fast it would take to blue-helmet whatever forces arrived, other than our own, of course. We would not be blue- helmeted. We would be there to facilitate and then to leave. And we had a good discussion. And I think we had a meeting of minds on that subject.

(END VIDEO CLIP) WOODRUFF: President Bush says U.S. troops may be required in Liberia, but he still doesn't have all the facts, he says. And he says he hopes to make a decision as soon as possible. And he made it clear that a deployment would be conditional on Liberian president Charles Taylor stepping aside.

Let's check in now with our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre.

Jamie, what about what the president and the secretary-general had to say? How much closer are we, if at all, to U.S. troops going in as peacekeepers?

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, the timetable's not clear, Judy, but I think we got a much clearer indication from both the president and Kofi Annan that -- about sort of how this deployment would work.

The United States, as President Bush said, is committed to support the peacekeeping effort, but we saw that Secretary Annan said that, under the plans discussed now, there be a vanguard, he called it, of between 500 and 1,000 West African peacekeeping troops that would go in. Then they would be supported by the United States in a support capacity. And following that, the mission would transition into a U.N. blue-helmet mission.

Now, President Bush said that he has not yet made a decision, because he needs to get a report back from the U.S. assessment team about exactly what's needed. But he did say it would be a definite mission with a limited tenure, he said, in other words, that there would be a definite date in which the United States would be withdrawing from Liberia, so a limited role. It looks like the U.S. is tending more toward a support role, rather than front-line peacekeeping forces, and still no decision made by the White House.

And I should mention also that the U.S.-European command has dispatched about 100 additional troops, along with some helicopters and a C-130 airplane. That's to provide additional support to the assessment team that's on the ground there now, particularly if they had to leave in a hurry. There would be the forces there to get them out. But, right now, things are fairly stable and they're continuing their work -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: So, Jamie, it's just a matter of continuing to assess this thing before the decision is made?

MCINTYRE: Yes. I think, clearly, we saw from President Bush that the U.S. is going to participate.

But it is conditional on Charles Taylor leaving. It is conditional on the limited role and a limited timeframe for the U.S. troops. And there are still some details that need to be worked out. And it's pretty clear at this point that the U.S. is not talking about, as I said, having front-line peacekeeping forces, but more in a support and logistics role for the West African nations.

WOODRUFF: All right, Jamie McIntyre, thanks very much.

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





Questions; Bush Meets With U.N. Secretary-General>