Return to Transcripts main page
American Morning
Interview with Senator Richard Shelby
Aired December 11, 2002 - 08:03 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: There is a lot of front page news to tackle with Senator Richard Shelby, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The SCUD missiles seized at sea off the Yemen Coast and today's congressional intelligence report focusing on what went wrong in the days and months before September 11.
Senator Shelby joins us from Capitol Hill this morning.
Good to see you again.
Welcome back, sir.
SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL), VICE CHAIRMAN, SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Good morning, Paula.
ZAHN: Let's talk a little bit about what you've learned about this interception of this ship at sea. An administration source saying "he's 99 percent sure the ship was on its way to Yemen."
What have you learned?
SHELBY: Well, I wouldn't go into everything I've been briefed on, Paula, not on the air. But I can tell you this, this just shows again that North Korea is one of the large proliferators of weapons in the world. They make a lot of money out of it and here they're sending, obviously sending those missiles for money to a volatile region of the world.
I want to commend our intelligence people for intercepting that. I'm sure they've been following it all along but this is a success.
ZAHN: I don't know if you could see this, Senator, from where you were standing, but we had just shown the pictures at the point of interdiction of this ship. Based on what you just said about North Korea, we also know that it was perfectly legal to do this, right? So if that's the case, what do we do about it?
SHELBY: Well, what we've tried to do about it not only with North Korea, but with China, with Russia and other countries -- Russia and China are big proliferators. They reach an agreement with us and then obviously violate it as soon as they can. What we're trying to do is use diplomatic pressure, economic pressure and negotiations. But it hasn't worked because the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans and others are arming the world and going to cause a lot of trouble, and probably ultimately arming terrorists.
ZAHN: There are those this morning that say the only way you can really get to North Korea is to get to North Korea's sugar daddy, China, and apply some sort of pressure on China. Does that scenario make sense to you?
SHELBY: Well, we have worked through China diplomatically on a lot of things and with a lot of success dealing with Korea. I think we have to work with China in the future in dealing with Korea because Korea, North Korea is a dangerous country with a dangerous paranoid leader. We cannot ignore it. Right now we're focused on Iraq and the Persian Gulf area, but sooner or later we're going to have to focus on the peninsula of Korea.
ZAHN: In your judgment, then, is North -- does North Korea pose as big of a threat to U.S. interests, then, as Iraq?
SHELBY: A big threat to Southeast Asia, to Japan, possibly even to China in the long run. But at the moment, I think we should focus on Iraq.
ZAHN: Let's turn now to the intelligence failures pre-9/11. Your group having just completed a report that you're going to make parts public today. I know you have felt that the report hasn't gone far enough and that some people should have been assigned some blame. Like whom?
SHELBY: Well, I believe from the top to the middle managers where people are responsible for their actions, and I believe everyone's accountable for their actions, where they failed to do their job at a given time. And we, through the report, there are many failures that we point out.
We're asking the inspector generals of the various agencies to look into this, to get to the facts and either reward or punish people. That's the nature of the game. We should do it because people are responsible for their actions.
ZAHN: You have folks, though, out there like Senator Mike DeWine, who say by blaming individuals within the intelligence community, in a way, that's a convenient way for Congress to avoid its own responsibilities for pre-9/11 failures.
SHELBY: Well, I, you know, Senator DeWine and I are great friends. We work on the committee together. He has a point. Congress has a lot of responsibility her to do proper oversight and also to furnish the resources, the money and initiate programs from time to time in the intelligence community.
But the people who run the intelligence community should be accountable and today I don't see any accountability.
ZAHN: Finally this morning, Senator, is there anything in this report that can be implemented that is going to make Americans any less vulnerable to future terrorist attacks?
SHELBY: Oh, absolutely. There are a number of recommendations that will have to be first carried out by the agencies. But I believe the first one is, and the most important, is the energy -- I mean the intelligence czar. We need someone who will really be in charge of all the intelligence agencies. Today, we don't have anybody. We have principalities. We have dukedoms. But we don't have a CEO.
ZAHN: And in the past the Bush administration hasn't shown a great willingness to, on this idea of an intelligence czar. Do you think the administration is about to change its mind based on this report?
SHELBY: There have been a lot of powerful people who have recommended the same thing that this committee, these committees are coming out with. And what will be interesting is to see what the Kissinger Mutual Commission does in the wake of what we've done.
ZAHN: Who do you think would be a likely candidate if this job is ever created?
SHELBY: Oh, that would be for the president and that would be way down the road. I think what we should do now is talk about our report, let the Kissinger-Mitchell commission pick it up and go from it and see what they do, too.
ZAHN: Before we let you go, one last question about Senator Strom Thurmond and some of the remarks Senator Lott made at his 100th birthday celebrations. There are a lot of folks out there now saying because of what he said at the celebration he should not be allowed to become Senate majority leader. What do you think?
SHELBY: Well, he is the majority leader of the U.S. Senate. He has been the majority leader and I think I've seen on television Senator Lott has apologized for his remarks. And I think in the past if someone's sincere and they go on to something else. Senator Lott is a good senator. He's a good leader.
ZAHN: Senator Richard Shelby, we'll leave it there this morning.
Thank you, as always, for your time.
SHELBY: Thank you.
ZAHN: Appreciate it.
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 December 11, 2002 - 08:03 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: There is a lot of front page news to tackle with Senator Richard Shelby, Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The SCUD missiles seized at sea off the Yemen Coast and today's congressional intelligence report focusing on what went wrong in the days and months before September 11.
Senator Shelby joins us from Capitol Hill this morning.
Good to see you again.
Welcome back, sir.
SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL), VICE CHAIRMAN, SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Good morning, Paula.
ZAHN: Let's talk a little bit about what you've learned about this interception of this ship at sea. An administration source saying "he's 99 percent sure the ship was on its way to Yemen."
What have you learned?
SHELBY: Well, I wouldn't go into everything I've been briefed on, Paula, not on the air. But I can tell you this, this just shows again that North Korea is one of the large proliferators of weapons in the world. They make a lot of money out of it and here they're sending, obviously sending those missiles for money to a volatile region of the world.
I want to commend our intelligence people for intercepting that. I'm sure they've been following it all along but this is a success.
ZAHN: I don't know if you could see this, Senator, from where you were standing, but we had just shown the pictures at the point of interdiction of this ship. Based on what you just said about North Korea, we also know that it was perfectly legal to do this, right? So if that's the case, what do we do about it?
SHELBY: Well, what we've tried to do about it not only with North Korea, but with China, with Russia and other countries -- Russia and China are big proliferators. They reach an agreement with us and then obviously violate it as soon as they can. What we're trying to do is use diplomatic pressure, economic pressure and negotiations. But it hasn't worked because the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans and others are arming the world and going to cause a lot of trouble, and probably ultimately arming terrorists.
ZAHN: There are those this morning that say the only way you can really get to North Korea is to get to North Korea's sugar daddy, China, and apply some sort of pressure on China. Does that scenario make sense to you?
SHELBY: Well, we have worked through China diplomatically on a lot of things and with a lot of success dealing with Korea. I think we have to work with China in the future in dealing with Korea because Korea, North Korea is a dangerous country with a dangerous paranoid leader. We cannot ignore it. Right now we're focused on Iraq and the Persian Gulf area, but sooner or later we're going to have to focus on the peninsula of Korea.
ZAHN: In your judgment, then, is North -- does North Korea pose as big of a threat to U.S. interests, then, as Iraq?
SHELBY: A big threat to Southeast Asia, to Japan, possibly even to China in the long run. But at the moment, I think we should focus on Iraq.
ZAHN: Let's turn now to the intelligence failures pre-9/11. Your group having just completed a report that you're going to make parts public today. I know you have felt that the report hasn't gone far enough and that some people should have been assigned some blame. Like whom?
SHELBY: Well, I believe from the top to the middle managers where people are responsible for their actions, and I believe everyone's accountable for their actions, where they failed to do their job at a given time. And we, through the report, there are many failures that we point out.
We're asking the inspector generals of the various agencies to look into this, to get to the facts and either reward or punish people. That's the nature of the game. We should do it because people are responsible for their actions.
ZAHN: You have folks, though, out there like Senator Mike DeWine, who say by blaming individuals within the intelligence community, in a way, that's a convenient way for Congress to avoid its own responsibilities for pre-9/11 failures.
SHELBY: Well, I, you know, Senator DeWine and I are great friends. We work on the committee together. He has a point. Congress has a lot of responsibility her to do proper oversight and also to furnish the resources, the money and initiate programs from time to time in the intelligence community.
But the people who run the intelligence community should be accountable and today I don't see any accountability.
ZAHN: Finally this morning, Senator, is there anything in this report that can be implemented that is going to make Americans any less vulnerable to future terrorist attacks?
SHELBY: Oh, absolutely. There are a number of recommendations that will have to be first carried out by the agencies. But I believe the first one is, and the most important, is the energy -- I mean the intelligence czar. We need someone who will really be in charge of all the intelligence agencies. Today, we don't have anybody. We have principalities. We have dukedoms. But we don't have a CEO.
ZAHN: And in the past the Bush administration hasn't shown a great willingness to, on this idea of an intelligence czar. Do you think the administration is about to change its mind based on this report?
SHELBY: There have been a lot of powerful people who have recommended the same thing that this committee, these committees are coming out with. And what will be interesting is to see what the Kissinger Mutual Commission does in the wake of what we've done.
ZAHN: Who do you think would be a likely candidate if this job is ever created?
SHELBY: Oh, that would be for the president and that would be way down the road. I think what we should do now is talk about our report, let the Kissinger-Mitchell commission pick it up and go from it and see what they do, too.
ZAHN: Before we let you go, one last question about Senator Strom Thurmond and some of the remarks Senator Lott made at his 100th birthday celebrations. There are a lot of folks out there now saying because of what he said at the celebration he should not be allowed to become Senate majority leader. What do you think?
SHELBY: Well, he is the majority leader of the U.S. Senate. He has been the majority leader and I think I've seen on television Senator Lott has apologized for his remarks. And I think in the past if someone's sincere and they go on to something else. Senator Lott is a good senator. He's a good leader.
ZAHN: Senator Richard Shelby, we'll leave it there this morning.
Thank you, as always, for your time.
SHELBY: Thank you.
ZAHN: Appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
