Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Interview With Richard Shelby

Aired September 25, 2002 - 07:05   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.


PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Back here at home, the Senate has voted 90 to 8 to create an independent commission to investigate events leading up to 9/11. The vote to create the panel comes on the heels of an endorsement from President Bush.
On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, more testimony at the Joint Congressional Hearing into U.S. intelligence failures. Lawmakers heard how the FBI failed to act on terror concerns from field agents, some of those concerns going way back before 1998.

Joining us now from Washington, Senator Richard Shelby, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Welcome back, sir.

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: Good morning.

Was there anything you heard in the testimony by FBI agents or the investigative staffers that would indicate to you any level of detail that could have prevented what happened on September 11?

SHELBY: As we look back, Paula, doing a post-mortem, we're looking at what happened, what people shared or didn't share on the information.

If you look at things even from the prism we're looking at now, we can see collectively a lot of information. Had they -- had the proper people known all of it before September 11, maybe things would be different, but that's something that's just pure speculation.

What we're up against here, as we look into this -- look back, we are seeing that there's just not a lot of cooperation in sharing information. There is no fusion of information at the end of an investigation by the FBI, the CIA. As a rule, one is doing one thing, one is doing another. I think that's what we saw yesterday.

ZAHN: Is there anything that's changed? Or does that lack of cooperation still exist?

SHELBY: Well, that's a very good question coming a year later. I think there have been some changes, but it will be a long time before we can measure significant change. I'm afraid there have not been enough changes.

ZAHN: And specifically what could you point to?

SHELBY: Well, I believe that there is not enough sharing of information yet between all of the agencies that make up the intelligence community. But you know, that is our goal.

That's one of the debates going on now in dealing with the creation of the Homeland Security Department. Will we create in the Homeland Security an intelligence component that will be able to analyze and task other agencies for more information in dealing with possible terrorist attacks? We have not solved that yet. That might be a step in the right direction.

ZAHN: But, Senator, why is it more than a year later that that lack of cooperation still exists between these agencies? Is it turf warfare, or is it something else?

SHELBY: I think you hit it on the head. It's turf. In other words, there are a lot of dukes (ph) out there that they have an agency -- I believe there are 14 intelligence agencies making up the community, from the CIA, FBI, NSA and so forth. There are culture differences. The training is different. The training heretofore has been different for an analyst at the CIA or an agent at the CIA from an agent at the FBI, and for various reasons. Sometimes for good reason.

But if they're going to work together, if we are going to prevent the next terrorist attack, they've got a big leap forward to go.

ZAHN: Talk about big leap. Even the FBI acknowledged yesterday there are some 68,000 terrorism leads that can't be followed on or weren't followed on because of technology failures. What could be done immediately that would change that?

SHELBY: Well, one point that was brought up was resources. Congress can provide, and I believe will provide, more money; in other words, for more training, more agents, better technology. That's one thing.

But technology or resource alone won't do it, Paula. A lot of those decisions were human decisions. It had nothing to do with technology or resources, as we look back on what happened and what the big failures were caused from.

ZAHN: There is so much debate about this independent commission that's going to conduct a broad -- or likely to conduct a broad inquiry. At one point, you were opposed to that idea. Do you think it's a good idea now?

SHELBY: I think it is. I spoke for it. I worked with Senator Lieberman and McCain on the floor of the Senate yesterday. We got 90 votes, 90 to 8. That is an over, overwhelming majority. And I did it for several reasons.

One, we don't have the scope in the intelligence inquiry -- the joint inquiry we are doing. We do not have the scope to get into immigration, to investigate FAA and other things. We are doing, I believe, a credible job. We've got a great staff director. We've got great staff. And we are laying the predicate big time for the next commission to follow up on this.

There were nine investigations, separate investigations, dealing with the failure of intelligence at Pearl Harbor. This is not the first one, the one we're doing now, and it won't be the last.

But what we really want to do is get to the bottom of everything. Time is not on our side in our investigation, but time maybe will be on the side of the commission building on what we have done thus far.

ZAHN: We've got five seconds left. Do you think you can get the cooperation you need from the Bush administration?

SHELBY: We're not getting all of the cooperation. We are getting some cooperation, but we have to extract a lot of information. We have to go through and debate every little point.

ZAHN: Senator Richard Shelby, it's always good to have you with us here on AMERICAN MORNING.

SHELBY: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: Thanks for your time.

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







Aired September 25, 2002 - 07:05   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Back here at home, the Senate has voted 90 to 8 to create an independent commission to investigate events leading up to 9/11. The vote to create the panel comes on the heels of an endorsement from President Bush.
On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, more testimony at the Joint Congressional Hearing into U.S. intelligence failures. Lawmakers heard how the FBI failed to act on terror concerns from field agents, some of those concerns going way back before 1998.

Joining us now from Washington, Senator Richard Shelby, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Welcome back, sir.

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: Good morning.

Was there anything you heard in the testimony by FBI agents or the investigative staffers that would indicate to you any level of detail that could have prevented what happened on September 11?

SHELBY: As we look back, Paula, doing a post-mortem, we're looking at what happened, what people shared or didn't share on the information.

If you look at things even from the prism we're looking at now, we can see collectively a lot of information. Had they -- had the proper people known all of it before September 11, maybe things would be different, but that's something that's just pure speculation.

What we're up against here, as we look into this -- look back, we are seeing that there's just not a lot of cooperation in sharing information. There is no fusion of information at the end of an investigation by the FBI, the CIA. As a rule, one is doing one thing, one is doing another. I think that's what we saw yesterday.

ZAHN: Is there anything that's changed? Or does that lack of cooperation still exist?

SHELBY: Well, that's a very good question coming a year later. I think there have been some changes, but it will be a long time before we can measure significant change. I'm afraid there have not been enough changes.

ZAHN: And specifically what could you point to?

SHELBY: Well, I believe that there is not enough sharing of information yet between all of the agencies that make up the intelligence community. But you know, that is our goal.

That's one of the debates going on now in dealing with the creation of the Homeland Security Department. Will we create in the Homeland Security an intelligence component that will be able to analyze and task other agencies for more information in dealing with possible terrorist attacks? We have not solved that yet. That might be a step in the right direction.

ZAHN: But, Senator, why is it more than a year later that that lack of cooperation still exists between these agencies? Is it turf warfare, or is it something else?

SHELBY: I think you hit it on the head. It's turf. In other words, there are a lot of dukes (ph) out there that they have an agency -- I believe there are 14 intelligence agencies making up the community, from the CIA, FBI, NSA and so forth. There are culture differences. The training is different. The training heretofore has been different for an analyst at the CIA or an agent at the CIA from an agent at the FBI, and for various reasons. Sometimes for good reason.

But if they're going to work together, if we are going to prevent the next terrorist attack, they've got a big leap forward to go.

ZAHN: Talk about big leap. Even the FBI acknowledged yesterday there are some 68,000 terrorism leads that can't be followed on or weren't followed on because of technology failures. What could be done immediately that would change that?

SHELBY: Well, one point that was brought up was resources. Congress can provide, and I believe will provide, more money; in other words, for more training, more agents, better technology. That's one thing.

But technology or resource alone won't do it, Paula. A lot of those decisions were human decisions. It had nothing to do with technology or resources, as we look back on what happened and what the big failures were caused from.

ZAHN: There is so much debate about this independent commission that's going to conduct a broad -- or likely to conduct a broad inquiry. At one point, you were opposed to that idea. Do you think it's a good idea now?

SHELBY: I think it is. I spoke for it. I worked with Senator Lieberman and McCain on the floor of the Senate yesterday. We got 90 votes, 90 to 8. That is an over, overwhelming majority. And I did it for several reasons.

One, we don't have the scope in the intelligence inquiry -- the joint inquiry we are doing. We do not have the scope to get into immigration, to investigate FAA and other things. We are doing, I believe, a credible job. We've got a great staff director. We've got great staff. And we are laying the predicate big time for the next commission to follow up on this.

There were nine investigations, separate investigations, dealing with the failure of intelligence at Pearl Harbor. This is not the first one, the one we're doing now, and it won't be the last.

But what we really want to do is get to the bottom of everything. Time is not on our side in our investigation, but time maybe will be on the side of the commission building on what we have done thus far.

ZAHN: We've got five seconds left. Do you think you can get the cooperation you need from the Bush administration?

SHELBY: We're not getting all of the cooperation. We are getting some cooperation, but we have to extract a lot of information. We have to go through and debate every little point.

ZAHN: Senator Richard Shelby, it's always good to have you with us here on AMERICAN MORNING.

SHELBY: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: Thanks for your time.

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