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American Morning
Interview with Senator Saxby Chambliss
Aired July 23, 2003 - 07:18 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.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A congressional report on 9/11 is due to be released tomorrow, and it is expected to paint an unflattering picture of U.S. intelligence operations leading up to that fateful day.
Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia serves on the Intelligence and Armed Service Committee, and he joins us this morning from the Capitol to talk about the 9/11 report, as also as well about the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons.
Good morning to you, sir. Thanks for joining us.
SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R), GEORGIA: Glad to be with you, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Let's first start talking about Uday and Qusay, now confirmed dead by U.S. military officials, obviously a huge morale booster for U.S. troops serving in Iraq. But tell me if you think in any way tactics on the ground will change now. Is the resistance diminished?
CHAMBLISS: Well, certainly there is the potential for that to happen. I think you may even see an increase in activity on the other side directed towards American troops in the short term, just kind of in retaliation. Certainly, we should expect that.
But I think over the long term, anytime you take one of the commanding generals out -- and in this case, we've taken two of them out -- then certainly it bodes well for the cessation of the violence directed towards American GIs.
O'BRIEN: A few minutes ago, we heard from an Iraqi exile that Iraqis need to see the pictures of the dead sons. Do you think they should be made public so that everyone could see them?
CHAMBLISS: Oh, I think they should, and I think they will. I would hope that sometime during today, maybe even at the news conference this morning, we'll see that. We know that there was a photographer present, so I expect that it'll be graphic, but it needs to be done.
O'BRIEN: Let's turn now and talk about this congressional report on 9/11 about the intelligence -- or maybe more appropriately, the failure of intelligence. Where do you think in a nutshell this report lays the blame?
CHAMBLISS: Well, Soledad, we have known since 9/11 that there were deficiencies within the U.S. intelligence community, both the domestic intelligence gatherers as well as our CIA, as well as the NSC. And this report is going to take the report that my subcommittee released about a year ago and expand it. And it's going to be a little more specific in some areas relative to the FBI, knowing that there were some individuals within the United States who were suspected to have a terrorist background and they failed to monitor those people. There are specific instances like that that did occur.
But at the end of the day, what this report concludes is the same as what everybody else in the intel community has concluded, and that is that even under the very best of circumstances, it's just unfortunate that we weren't in a position and would not have been in a position to really know that September 11 was going to come at the time and in the form that it did.
But this is going to be a report that continues to be very critical of our intelligence community.
O'BRIEN: You say "critical," you say "specific," and yet at the same time there are certainly people -- critics, who say that the White House refusing to declassify much of this information makes the report of significantly less value to the public.
CHAMBLISS: Well, it very well may from the standpoint of the reading material. But you have to remember, Soledad, we have got operatives who are still out in the field. We've got methods of gathering intelligence information that we don't want known by everybody around the world. And we have to protect those sources and methods. We could put people's lives in jeopardy, and we could put out ability to gather information in jeopardy.
So, there are reasons why we can't declassify all of the report that was made.
O'BRIEN: Senator Saxby Chambliss, thank you for joining us, sir. Appreciate it.
CHAMBLISS: Always a pleasure, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Likewise.
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 July 23, 2003 - 07:18 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A congressional report on 9/11 is due to be released tomorrow, and it is expected to paint an unflattering picture of U.S. intelligence operations leading up to that fateful day.
Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia serves on the Intelligence and Armed Service Committee, and he joins us this morning from the Capitol to talk about the 9/11 report, as also as well about the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons.
Good morning to you, sir. Thanks for joining us.
SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R), GEORGIA: Glad to be with you, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Let's first start talking about Uday and Qusay, now confirmed dead by U.S. military officials, obviously a huge morale booster for U.S. troops serving in Iraq. But tell me if you think in any way tactics on the ground will change now. Is the resistance diminished?
CHAMBLISS: Well, certainly there is the potential for that to happen. I think you may even see an increase in activity on the other side directed towards American troops in the short term, just kind of in retaliation. Certainly, we should expect that.
But I think over the long term, anytime you take one of the commanding generals out -- and in this case, we've taken two of them out -- then certainly it bodes well for the cessation of the violence directed towards American GIs.
O'BRIEN: A few minutes ago, we heard from an Iraqi exile that Iraqis need to see the pictures of the dead sons. Do you think they should be made public so that everyone could see them?
CHAMBLISS: Oh, I think they should, and I think they will. I would hope that sometime during today, maybe even at the news conference this morning, we'll see that. We know that there was a photographer present, so I expect that it'll be graphic, but it needs to be done.
O'BRIEN: Let's turn now and talk about this congressional report on 9/11 about the intelligence -- or maybe more appropriately, the failure of intelligence. Where do you think in a nutshell this report lays the blame?
CHAMBLISS: Well, Soledad, we have known since 9/11 that there were deficiencies within the U.S. intelligence community, both the domestic intelligence gatherers as well as our CIA, as well as the NSC. And this report is going to take the report that my subcommittee released about a year ago and expand it. And it's going to be a little more specific in some areas relative to the FBI, knowing that there were some individuals within the United States who were suspected to have a terrorist background and they failed to monitor those people. There are specific instances like that that did occur.
But at the end of the day, what this report concludes is the same as what everybody else in the intel community has concluded, and that is that even under the very best of circumstances, it's just unfortunate that we weren't in a position and would not have been in a position to really know that September 11 was going to come at the time and in the form that it did.
But this is going to be a report that continues to be very critical of our intelligence community.
O'BRIEN: You say "critical," you say "specific," and yet at the same time there are certainly people -- critics, who say that the White House refusing to declassify much of this information makes the report of significantly less value to the public.
CHAMBLISS: Well, it very well may from the standpoint of the reading material. But you have to remember, Soledad, we have got operatives who are still out in the field. We've got methods of gathering intelligence information that we don't want known by everybody around the world. And we have to protect those sources and methods. We could put people's lives in jeopardy, and we could put out ability to gather information in jeopardy.
So, there are reasons why we can't declassify all of the report that was made.
O'BRIEN: Senator Saxby Chambliss, thank you for joining us, sir. Appreciate it.
CHAMBLISS: Always a pleasure, Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Likewise.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
