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July 12, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - July 12

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NOVAK: I saw no such campaign. Nobody in the administration ever said anything critical about Wilson to me. And my column was not critical of Wilson.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That's Bob Novak on this program just a fee minutes ago discussing the allegations that there was a campaign by the Bush administration to discredit Joe Wilson, the former ambassador who took the trip to Niger or Niger depending on how you like to pronounce it -- then later wrote a column critical of the Bush administration out of that trip and he was later revealed of course first by Bob Novak and subsequently by others that his wife was CIA and by the Senate Intelligence Committee it was revealed that his wife suggested him for the job.

Some analytical observations 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, apart from the Scooter Libby indictment charges that he misled the grand jury or misled the investigation after all this -- all of this had happened, no one was charged, criminally or otherwise in this whole case for leaking Valerie Plame's identity and role with the CIA, but the political allegation remains out there, that there was this campaign on, a disgraceful campaign, some argue, by the administration to discredit the critic. Now we have Novak's side of the story for the first time in his column and this interview. Where does that leave the allegation of a campaign against Joe Wilson -- Mara.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, as far as the Novak piece of this was concerned, he says he wasn't the recipient of any campaign to discredit him. That doesn't mean there wasn't one and even if there was one, it wasn't illegal, I mean, this is -- if somebody wants to discredited, you're a critic, they might suggest, and as they did, that he only went to Niger because his wife suggested him for it, it was kind of a junket. But that aside, what Bob Novak is saying is that his -- he was one who started the ball rolling and that the conversations with his primary source, her name was disclosed to him inadvertently, or at least that's what the primary source told him through a third party afterwards.

HUME: And also, Mort, there was -- he characterized how he was spoke to by his primary source, also by Karl Rove.

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": Yeah, but look, I think the guts of this was Valerie Plame a secret agent of the CIA. If she was and this was leaked to Novak or to anybody else, then this justifies all the hoopla that's been raised about it by Joe Wilson, by all the left, that this is a monstrous scandal where the administration systematically leaked the name of a covert agent in violation of all of their principles...

HUME: Basically, based on what we now know.

KONDRACKE: Based on what we know she was not deep cover. She was -- if Novak -- if what Novak says is true, and I have no reason doubt it, Bill Harlow said that she was not -- didn't say that she was going to be in danger, said she wasn't going overseas again, didn't.

HUME: Didn't say her status was classified, according to Bill.

KONDRACKE: And didn't get George Tenet on the phone to urge Novak not to publish it. If all of this is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, then the whole thing explodes. This is -- it sort o looks as though Joe Wilson decided, at a certain point, that he would put himself forward to try to discredit the administration's policy in Iraq, then when his wife was named, then he and others decided to make a huge scandal out of this, which is not justified.

FRED BARNES, "WEEKLY STANDARD": That's right. Look, the whole idea of a campaign, an offensive, a conspiracy to smear Joe Wilson has been Demolished. Look, both -- the times when Bob Novak asked about this, nobody called him. The guy he talked to didn't set up the interview, Bob set up the interview. Karl Rove didn't call him, and the name came up. There are other people who talked to Karl Rove, but there's no evidence anywhere that I've ever heard at any time of a campaign to out Valerie Plame as a way to hurt Joe Wilson.

Now, there was a campaign to rebut the column he wrote, saying the Bush administration knew there wasn't -- there'd been no attempt to get uranium in Africa but it went ahead and said so, Bush in his speech, and that, of course, wasn't true in his -- that Bush had lied in the State of the Union Address, but it's clear now there was no campaign, there was no conspiracy, there was no offensive.

LIASSON: And the -- go ahead.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: There is an interesting contrast between the Bill Harlow conversations to Bob Novak as described by Bob Novak about not reporting this and what we know about the urgings on the "New York Times" and other newspapers not to disclose these other secret programs, isn't there?

LIASSON: Yeah. I mean, yeah, in terms of how.

HUME: Intense it was -- how high level intense it was...

BARNES: (INAUDIBLE)

LIASSON: Sure -- but wait a minute. But the CIA Itself is the one who went to the Justice Department and said, you know, a possible crime has been committed.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: Every time one of these things happens there an almost always a routine referral.

LIASSON: Yeah.

HUME: This one got turned into a special prosecutor investigation. How did that happen?

LIASSON: Well, that's because Ashcroft recused himself and a series of events occurred after this happened. I hope at the end of this after Patrick Fitzgerald is finished he'll write a report and explain everything that happened.

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: There's a huge difference in the levels of intervention on this. The one person I would like to hear from is Bill Harlow as to what exactly he says he told Novak.

HUME: When we come back with "The Panel," Israel responds to the kidnapping of two more of its soldiers and counterattacks against terrorist forces in Lebanon, now. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUME: Even as we've been sitting here, news is coming out of the Middle East. The latest is that a bomb dropped according to -- this according to the latest dispatches, a bomb dropped by an Israeli war plane destroyed the Palestinian foreign ministry building early Thursday, This in Gaza City. The bomb is said to have collapsed the building -- you see what appears to be the aftermath of it there -- and caused widespread destruction in the area. The foreign ministry is controlled, of course, by the Islamic militant group, Hamas. All of this raises the further question of whether I was wrong when I suggested earlier in this program if the Middle East is teetering on the edge of war. Is it now fair to say that the mid-east is now engulfed in a full-scale war -- Fred.

BARNES: Well, I certainly think so. I don't think this is going to come down to negotiations over what prisoners are going to be released in favor of bringing back the two Israeli soldiers, two kidnapped by Hezbollah and one, a couple of weeks ago kidnapped by Hamas. It's clear the unilateral turnover of territory by the Israelis, that policy has failed. They turned over the Gaza, they turned over that strip of Lebanon, north of Israel and what happens, they get attacked by Hamas rockets for a long time by Hamas, and then they cross the border and grab -- and killed two soldiers and grab another.

Today, on the northern front, Israel was attacked in many sites by Hezbollah and now they've retaliated there. The Israelis have it -- they're at war on two fronts. The Iranians are obviously involved. Hezbollah does not move, does not sneeze unless the Iranians who finance them tell them it's OK. So, they're involved there and the Iranians are also financing Hamas, though I don't know whether they actually told them to go do this. But, what does Israel have to do now? Israel needs a deterrent on these borders, it needs to really wipe out the Hamas government that has only one purpose and that's destruction of Israel. And they're going to have to do something to take down Hezbollah as well.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, well, there is a war between Hamas and Israel, that' clear. I mean, the Israelis -- but, I don't think they're going to reoccupy Gaza. I mean there's no -- the government doesn't say that they are and it doesn't look as though they are.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: .Lebanon report that.

KONDRACKE: Well, you know, I -- they're -- they're saying that they're not going to do that either. They are attacking because they were attacked. Hezbollah in kind of a copycat operation, you know, the Hamas seizes one Israeli soldier, so then Hezbollah ups the ante and seizes two and what they claim they want is big prisoner exchanges. Now, Fred's right, I mean, this is Iran -- Iran pulls the strings on Hezbollah and it could be, as well, that Iran is...

HUME: What about Syria pulling the strings on Hamas?

KONDRACKE: Well, Syria is certainly involved in both because the leader of the military wing of Hamas is in Damascus. The Hezbollah I also controlled out of Damascus, it's funded by Iran. I mean this could also be Iran saying not only are we going to reject the nuclear deal, but we can stimulate our puppets to cause trouble anywhere in the region and what are you going to do about it? And I don't know that anybody is going to do anything about it.

LIASSON: Look, I agree that right now Israel is fighting on two fronts and there certainly are involved in a war, I don't know if it's a full-scale war in the Middle East. But I do think that the imperative that caused them to pull back from Gaza and from Lebanon are still there, I don't think the situation is going to be reversed. I think that when Ariel Sharon made the decision to pull out of the territories, he did it because of long-range Demographic realities and I think those are still in effect.

BARNES: Yeah, not against the terrorist government though in Hamas. I mean that's quite different...

LIASSON: No, the United States policy was to allow Hamas to participate in those elections, not to lay any ground rules about how to participate...

BARNES: But how could we have stopped them, I mean how.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: Well, we could have said that the only parties that can participate are ones that renounce violence -- of course we could have. The Israelis wanted it.

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: I don't think there was some hope that Hamas might renounce violence once it got in power.

BARNES: Yeah, they're clearly not worried about getting the garbage collected. They're interested in ending Israel's existence. Another thing that's interesting, though, is the statements coming out of the Bush administration, normally from either republican or Democratic administrations, they would denounce the terrorists, denounce Hezbollah, denounce Hamas, and Israel for the incursions. This time no criticism of Israel. Nor should there be, but this -- believe me, they recognize the difference in Israel.

KONDRACKE: The denunciations were of Iran and Syria as appropriate.

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