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American Morning
Domestic Controversy Hanging Over President Bush
Aired January 13, 2004 - 09:10 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 domestic controversy is hanging over President Bush as he finishes up his two-day stay at the Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico. The controversy involved the comments of Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in a new book which hits store shelves today.
Dana Bash is traveling with the president. She's in Monterey, joins us with more.
Hey, Dana. Good morning.
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.
And President Bush is here in Monterrey, meeting with world leaders, trying to talk about issues like immigration and poverty and trade, but as you said, one issue has been overshadowing this summit, and that is the Paul O'Neill book, the tell-all, and especially, startling yesterday, the investigation, as least preliminary investigation that the Treasury Department back in Washington has launched to find out whether Paul O'Neill actually broke the law. They say that they want to know whether or not a piece of paper that was shown on CBS "60 MINUTES" that said "secret" on it was actually classified.
Now, Paul O'Neill did speak out about that this morning on NBC. He said that everything that he took, the 19,000 pages and documents he took from the Treasury Department, was approved by Treasury's chief counsel. And he said that perhaps what happened is the document that was shown that said "secret" was simply a cover page to other documents that might have been classified. But O'Neill said he wishes that somebody from Treasury would have called him simply to ask him about it, but that he understands. He said if he was still treasury secretary, he would probably launch a preliminary investigation as well -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Dana Bash for us this morning. Dana, thanks.
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 January 13, 2004 - 09:10 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 domestic controversy is hanging over President Bush as he finishes up his two-day stay at the Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico. The controversy involved the comments of Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in a new book which hits store shelves today.
Dana Bash is traveling with the president. She's in Monterey, joins us with more.
Hey, Dana. Good morning.
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.
And President Bush is here in Monterrey, meeting with world leaders, trying to talk about issues like immigration and poverty and trade, but as you said, one issue has been overshadowing this summit, and that is the Paul O'Neill book, the tell-all, and especially, startling yesterday, the investigation, as least preliminary investigation that the Treasury Department back in Washington has launched to find out whether Paul O'Neill actually broke the law. They say that they want to know whether or not a piece of paper that was shown on CBS "60 MINUTES" that said "secret" on it was actually classified.
Now, Paul O'Neill did speak out about that this morning on NBC. He said that everything that he took, the 19,000 pages and documents he took from the Treasury Department, was approved by Treasury's chief counsel. And he said that perhaps what happened is the document that was shown that said "secret" was simply a cover page to other documents that might have been classified. But O'Neill said he wishes that somebody from Treasury would have called him simply to ask him about it, but that he understands. He said if he was still treasury secretary, he would probably launch a preliminary investigation as well -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Dana Bash for us this morning. Dana, thanks.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
