---

May 17, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - May 17

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PAT ROBERTS, (R) KS: I don't think there is anything classified in Washington. This is the highest classified program. It's a capability that enables us to stop terrorist attacks. We stop terrorist attacks. The al Qaeda are planning attacks as we speak. This program is being diminished because of all the press and the leaks and the misinformation. A lot of it is misinformation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Senator Roberts there, of course, is talking about this whole question of what the National Security Agency is up to. It is reported some time ago that they are engaged in surveillance of telephone calls into and out of the United States believed to come from terrorist organizations and those with terrorist connections. And now this week has come, or this past week has come the story that says that the NSA has a huge database of telephone phone call information given over to it by three phone companies, to include Verizon, BellSouth and at&t.

Now Verizon and BellSouth have come out with denials of key parts of that story and "USA Today" is saying the following about what it is doing.

Quote, "We will continue to investigate and pursue the story. We are confident in our coverage of the phone database story. We will look closely into the issues raised by the BellSouth and Verizon statements."

The BellSouth and Verizon statements are worthy of some analytical observations now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of "The Weekly Standard," Mort Kondracke, executive editor of "Roll Call," and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, Fox News contributors all.

Well, I suppose the two key points denied by Verizon and BellSouth are no massive turn over of phone records, and two no contract to do that as specified in "USA Today," so where does that leave this story?

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": Well, BellSouth went farther than that. They say they couldn't find anybody at the entire company that had any dealings with the NSA as I recall, I think that was in their statement. That's pretty strong.

I think what happened here is that "USA Today" had some private sourches, anonymous sources, they didn't name them in the story. And then they went to the phone companies and when they didn't get knockdowns, for instance, BellSouth, "USA Today" said did not challenge the newspaper's account of the NSA data base. In effect a no comment. They took no comments either as confirmation or said, well, what the heck, we'll just go with our sources. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. This time it didn't.

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": Well, these statements are very carefully worded. It took six days for them to come out. In the beginning, Qwest, this other company, to its discredit said it was not cooperating with the NSA and specifically decided not to cooperated. Now if we are fighting a war on terrorism, you would think the telephone companies would want to cooperate and I would hope that they would be cooperating.

And for a company to opt out and say no, no, no we are to privacy minded for this is it is basically helping terrorists. I think Senator Roberts is absolutely right. What's going on now is shocking. People are treating the Constitution of the United States as a suicide pact. Here we have al- Qaeda, everybody has been watching "United 93," and everybody should watch "United 93," just to remind us of what we're dealing with.

They would slam a plane into the capitol, they would blow up an atomic bomb if they possibly could, and we are acting like people who are trying to protect us are criminals.

MARA LIASSON, NPR: First of all, I don't know if anybody is accusing the government or the phone companies in this case of being criminals. I think that there are a lot of questions about what this program is .

HUME: A lot of people are asserting that this, if it were done, was illegal. Lawsuits have been filed.

LIASSON: Lawsuits have been filed and that's another point about why I think these statements are coming out now. In other words, as Mort said, it did take quite a while for them to respond to this story. It was causing an active firestorm.

HUME: What does this suggest?

LIASSON: I think that suggests one of two things. Either they are big bureaucracies, these corporations, and it takes a long time for their P.R. machinery to kind of crank into action and get vetted by all the difference levels they have to or they realize, their initial statements were kind of we don't confirm or deny. They were general.

But maybe because these lawsuits have been filed and they're going to be fighting these lawsuits, they need to lay down a marker that explains.

HUME: Well, it suggests to me that these companies.

BARNES: It suggests that "USA Today" should have waited until they could have gotten a firmer answer. Obviously BellSouth had an investigation and their investigation - I didn't think their statement was very hedged at all, by the way, Mort.

They said we cannot find anyone within BellSouth who has ever been approached by the NSA. That's not very hedged. That's pretty unequivocal.

I think just "USA Today" - and I don't know how they can say they still have great confidence in their story and their reporting on this. Because they shouldn't have it. They probably should have waited.

LIASSON: Some of these executives are going to be called to testify under oath. And hopefully some of this will become clearer.

The Bush administration, when there is a false story in the press, well generally knock it down pretty aggressively. It didn't this time. It sounds like there is some type of program.

HUME: There is some kind of a program.

LIASSON: There is a data mining program of some kind, it just doesn't appear that -- It appears now that it is not what was in the newspaper.

KONDRACKE: The Verizon statement says what is false is that the assertion that Verizon was approached by NSA and entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from customers' domestic calls, this is false. Actually, nobody ever said that they were providing .

HUME: Yes they did.

KONDRACKE: With data from their customers' calls? The content of their calls? I don't think so.

BARNES: The data would be -- I don't know, Mara, how the White House could have knocked down the parts about Verizon and BellSouth, they were supposed to say. We are not confirming that this did not exist, but Verizon and BellSouth were not apart of it.

LIASSON: What I am saying is that this program .

HUME: If there was nothing at all going on like this .

LIASSON: If there was not a data mining program we would have heard that.

BARNES: I hope there is a data mining program.

KONDRACKE: I hope there is a robust data mining program and it is catching a lot of terrorists.

HUME: When we come back with our panel is President Bush regaining a little bit of his political footing after having the lowest opinion polls of his administration. We'll find out what the All Stars think next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, U.S. PRESIDENT: This is a good day for American workers and families and businesses.

You have passed a bill that will keep our taxes low and keep our economy growing and I'm really pleased to be able to sign this vital piece of legislation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That vital piece of legislation, as the president calls it, is a $70 billion extension of certain key tax cuts, that's the lowered rate on capital gains and stock dividend income as well as an extension of the protection of a great many taxpayers from the so called AMT, the alternative minimum tax. The president signs that into law today with considerable fanfare as you just saw.

This on the heels of a speech on immigration Monday night. The first domestic speech he's ever made before a national television audience of that kind. And this of course accompanies the appointment and presentation of the new press secretary and new chief of staff.

Is there anything -- Is this a lot of movement, or a lot of activity with no action, or is something happening with this presidency? Are there signs of recovery here?

LIASSON: Well, there certainly are signs of a new strategy and a concerted effort to deal with his problems.

Now in terms of results, whether it's actually working, we are going to have to wait a while to find out. But I would say they have diagnosed the problem and are moving aggressively to get conservatives back in the fold and reenergize for the fall. They have a series of votes planned on social issues that social conservatives are going to like. On gay marriage and stem cells and abortion.

They have got the tax cut bill which he signed today. Then, there might be a veto of a spending bill, we don't know. But there is a strategy. And they've had a kind of mini-White House shake up. I think clearly this week the briefings seemed better. We haven't had very many of them but there definitely are signs of a change. Now in terms of whether this is going to be enough to kind of move this great ocean liner around and send it in the right direction, we don't know.

KONDRACKE: As Karl Rove said earlier in the week, Iraq is the big sour point for the whole country and the main reason Bush's polls are down in the 30s.

What the White House is hoping will happen is that the Iraqi government will meet its deadline of next week to form a government. And when the government - if and when the government gets formed, there are going to be a series of events, they won't say what they are to bless this happening along the lines of this meeting that the president had last week with the secretaries of defense and state from past administrations.

In other words they are going to do everything they can to underscore that we are making progress in Iraq and hope that the public notices.

BARNES: We are making progress in Iraq. I hope the public does notice it.

The - Look, I think the president can make headway without getting big gains his poll numbers. His approval rating in Gallup dropped from 51 percent on the day he was inaugurated to what is it now, 31 percent. That is a precipitous drop but he has still been able to get some things. He got two conservative Supreme Court nominees confirmed in his second term. He just got this tax extension of the dividends, the capital gains taxes, which is important, and he has begun a stream of judges, conservative judges for the appeals courts that he is sending up, and I think he is going to get an immigration bill this year, as well and all that will help.

You can achieve things with fairly low poll ratings, and I don't expect his numbers to see his number back up to 51 percent or even 45 percent. He'd be lucky to get over 40.

HUME: Help me on that plan. If he manages to get a bill, there are going to be a lot of things in it and we heard this amazing debate today in the Senate over the use of the word amnesty. Let's not go there at this point yet. But obviously there will be things in the bill that a lot of the people, including many in his base are not going to like.

BARNES: Sure there are.

HUME: So how does that help? I'll tell you how it helps. If you want an enforcement only bill, that's fine, but it won't pass. It can't get through the Senate. The Democrats would filibuster it. It won't pass.

BARNES: If you want to beef up border enforcement, you are going to have to accept some other things that you may not like. You may have to accept earned citizenship.

HUME: And if you get those things, would it help your polls?

BARNES: Your poll standing won't matter.

HUME: Quickly.

BARNES: I think it will help the candidates this fall and help President Bush.

KONDRACKE: It will, but what will help the Republicans most is how they contrast themselves with the Democrats.

---

Sponsored Links

About Us | Contact | Advertise | Privacy Policy         © RealClearPolitics 2006