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May 06, 2006

Hot Stories: Glass Houses & Spy Games

Beltway Boys

FRED BARNES, CO-HOST: Coming up on "The Beltway Boys," forget Tom DeLay and the so-called culture of corruption. Democrats now have a boatload of ethics problems of their own to deal with.

JUAN WILLIAMS, GUEST CO-HOST: Immigration, gas prices and runaway spending exposing deep divisions within the GOP. Can President Bush heal the rip?

BARNES: Porter Goss, out, as CIA director. We'll tell you why he`s leaving.

WILLIAMS: And presidential hopeful Joe Biden bombs with a new plan to stabilize Iraq.

BARNES: "The Beltway Boys" are next, right after the headlines.

(NEWSBREAK)

BARNES: I'm Fred Barnes.

WILLIAMS: And I'm Juan Williams, in for Mort Kondracke. And we're "The Beltway Boys."

BARNES: And our story, number one, is glass houses.

Juan, you've heard Democrats, for months, who've been talking about the culture of corruption on Capitol Hill involving Republicans, like Tom DeLay and House member Bob Ney of Ohio? Well, now, it's blowback time.

(LAUGHTER)

It really is. Reminding people, reminding Democrats, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. And Democrats certainly threw a lot of them.

But, look, here's what I'm talking about now. William Jefferson, the democratic -- democratic -- congressman from New Orleans, is in a lot of trouble. Two people have pleaded guilty to being part of a bribery scheme involving bribing Congressman Jefferson.

Democratic Congressman Alan Mollohan, of West Virginia, been forced to resign as the chairman of the House Ethics Committee. And now, is under investigation to see if somehow he gave financially -- from this federal money that went to West Virginia, from here`s from, of course.

And now, democratic Congressman Patrick Kennedy, of Rhode Island, in trouble again. This time for, at 2:45 in the morning, barely missing a Capitol Hill police cruiser and getting out wobbly, and claiming that he was -- at 2:45 a.m., now -- that he was late for a vote in the House. Obviously, they were not in session.

Now, of course, Kennedy was charged with three traffic violations. And now he said, Friday, that he's going into rehabilitation, where he'd been before, last December. And then, he did not remember a thing.

Here was his explanation on Friday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PATRICK KENNEDY (D-RI): I simply do not remember getting out of bed, being pulled over by the police, or being cited for three driving infractions. That's not how I want to live my life. And it's not how I want to represent the people of Rhode Island.

The recurrence of an addiction problem can be triggered by things that happen in every day life, such as taking the treatment for a stomach flu. That's not an excuse for what happened Wednesday evening. But it is a reality of fighting a chronic condition for which I am taking full responsibility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAMS: Fred, you know what? You talk about blowback.

BARNES: Yes.

WILLIAMS: You know what, Fred? This is overblown. You can't compare a man, who may have had some Ambien, a sleep medication, in his system or had an irritated stomach and been given preparation drugs for that, to somebody who is -- I mean, he's admitted to thievery.

Jack Abramoff, the big lobbyist, you can't compare that to Duke Cunningham having a big yacht floating around out there on the Potomac. You can't compare that to Tom DeLay's golfing trips at the expense of, none other than, Jack Abramoff, the big lobbyist. You can't compare that to Conrad Burns ripping off the Indians.

Look, to me, you've got the republicans in control of the House and the Senate for over ten years. And what you see here is they disabled the Ethics Committee. And now, they've got ethics reform, passed just this past week, that everybody knows, is meager, at best.

They want to disclose lobbyist contributions to candidates and their advocating the legislation. But the fact is the politicians can still fly on a corporate jet. They can still take private trips, you know.

It seems to me, Fred, what you've got here is apples and oranges. And, of course, the Republicans are all too happy. They try to say, oh. And the Democrats are up to the same thing.

But you know the magnitude of the sins committed by the GOP are much larger here.

BARNES: Yes. The culture of corruption bites Democrats now.

Overblown you can call it, but, look, not the Jefferson case, at least potentially. I mean, here, if the two people who have pleaded guilty are correct, and it leads to an indictment of Congressman Jefferson -- he hasn't been charged with anything, yet. But this is just outright bribery. The same way, like the Duke Cunningham case and the Ambien.

You know, the first story was that he'd -- that Congressman Kennedy had taken Ambien. Ambien is not something you take when you're out at a bar or in a car. You take it when you're going to bed. It is a sleeping pill. So I think that's a bad excuse.

Now, I know I'm going to be accused of piling on Congressman Kennedy. But I just can't help showing...

WILLIAMS: No, go ahead. No, go ahead.

BARNES: I just can't help showing this tape from March 2000, when he had another problem. Watch this.

(VIDEO CLIP)

As you can see that he's there at the LA International Airport and he can't get that darn bag through the x-ray machine. And he gets into a tussle with a security guard. I am afraid -- in athletics, we would call this being injury-prone.

WILLIAMS: Well, you know, the fact is, on the political scale -- now that we've allowed you your excess there to pick on the poor man -- eight Democrats voted with the GOP for this very weak ethics reform, you know, contradicting their own leadership -- Pelosi begged them -- Nancy Pelosi - - begged them not to do it, because Pelosi wants the issues. Democrats want that culture of corruption issue. So you're right on that.

But let me say this to you. I think a pox on both houses, that they have such weak ability to reign in excess.

The fact is that the Republicans have been in control now for many years. Why don't you the Republicans would take control and take responsibility for the kind of trouble that Jack Abramoff brings on this town?

BARNES: Well, I think they have. And that is why Tom DeLay's resigning, among other things.

Anyway, the culture of corruption bites back.

All right. Coming up, Porter Goss, how he left the CIA. We'll tell you why. Hot story number two, it's right ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WILLIAMS: Welcome back to "The Beltway Boys." I'm Juan Williams in for Mort Kondracke.

Hot story number two, Fred, spy games. CIA Director Porter Goss said bye-bye in a surprise announcement, Friday, at the White House. He's the latest casualty of the war of words and information between the White House and the CIA.

The shooting, as you well now, includes leaks to the press over pressure on the CIA to give the White House information that would justify the war in Iraq, as well as leaks on secret prisons, leaks on wiretaps.

Goss, as you know, came in as a former agent assigned by President Bush to get control of rogue agents over at the agency. His heavy hand, firing people, reassigning, especially some of the older people involved, and polygraphs, at length, to discover who's doing the leaking, stirred the hornet's nest at Langley.

And the questions remain about, you know, did he get the right results? Because the result ultimately is the quality of information coming out of the CIA.

So it seems to me the White House was happy with Goss. Look, he was a guy who could have retired a long time ago, Fred, gone down to his home in Florida. He didn't do it. He was a good soldier.

Here's the president and Porter Goss at the White House on Friday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Porter's tenure at the CIA was one of transition. He's helped this agency become integrated into the intelligence community. And that was a tough job. And he's led ably.

PORTER GOSS, FORMER DIRECTOR, CIA: I honestly believe that we have improved dramatically, your goals for our nation's intelligence capabilities, which are, in fact, the things that I think are keeping us very safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARNES: You know, the White House explanation, as you probably heard, Juan, was that he had said, several times earlier this year, that he wanted to retire and the transition was set up. It was a good time for transition.

And he was responding, people at the White House said, to the Bolton rule. You know, this rule of the new White House chief of staff, Josh Bolton, that, if you are planning on leaving anytime in the next year or so, leave now. So he is leaving.

Now, I think Goss had to be unhappy with his loss of access to President Bush. Because you've got this new layer in the intelligence area, where John Negroponte was this new overall intelligence chief. And he was the one who would see the president every day, not Goss.

But, you know, all those screams and cries of pain and agony and so on, while Goss was in, told me that his effort to squeeze out all these left wing anti-Bush leakers was actually working. And so they were leaking more to the "Washington Post" saying how awful the Goss people were.

The White House assures, at least me, that his replacement will continue the Goss crack down on the anti-Bush leaker-types. And there are plenty of there.

WILLIAMS: Well, let me just tell you, if that's the case, you're in for more warfare between the White House and the CIA. Because the CIA view of Porter Goss, a guy who was a CIA agent, remember, was that he had become a puppet for the Bush administration. That he really had been politicized to the point that he was undermining the quality of work done by seasoned people in the agency. Now, that's not a good feeling.

You want the CIA to work with the White House, not for the White House, but with the White House. And if that's the case, then, if this is all about a crack down, I think you're just going to see more leaks and more trouble.

BARNES: Juan, there are two CIAs. There's the anti-Bush CIA, who think they were elected. And the pro-Bush CIA that responded to a Bush appointee, not a Bush puppet, Goss, but he was a Bush appointee.

WILLIAMS: All right.

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