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October 04, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - October 4

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RODNEY ALEXANDER (R), LOUISIANA: And there were emails like, what do you want for your birthday? When is your birthday? Can I have a picture of you? And those were the only emails that we ever saw.

TOM DELAY (R-TX), FMR. HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER: And they got evidence, they acted on that evidence and when they got hard evidence of the sexual nature they acted on that.

REP. CHARLES RANGEL (D), NEW YORK: If the speaker resigns it means that they were derelict in their duty, if he doesn't resign this thing is going to last right up until the election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: OK. There's the views from across the board on the Foley matter -- mess, if you will. Now some analytical observations from Jeff Birnbaum, columnist of the "Washington Post"; Juan Williams, senior correspondent for National Public Radio; and the syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, FOX NEWS contributors all.

So gentleman, today, we had a casualty among the Republican ranks, Kirk Fordham who is the chief of staff for Tom Reynolds who had worked for Foley, he claims that he told leadership almost three years ago. We were told this afternoon by Hastert's office that is not the case that it is not true and it did not happen in that way.

Aside from that specific allegation, Charles, let me ask you, what do you make of this whole mess? And at some point here in this discussion we'll get to the political repercussions for the election.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: This is a point who is spreading right throughout the party. It's a cancer and it's metastasizing, I could use every medical analogy in the book. It reminds me a bit of the House -- the banking scandal which destroyed the Democrats 12 years ago and cost them control of the House.

It started out to look as if it was only a few congressmen, but in the end, the people -- there was a sense in the electorate of disgust for the party in power. Even thought the details of this was murky, who knew exactly what, which emails, which instant messages. It looks as if there was a dereliction at some point in the leadership and the most damaging event today I thought was the Roy Blunt who's the No. 3 leader in the House Republican.

ANGLE: Let's -- we have that bite -- let's listen to what he said. This is Roy Blunt.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ROY BLUNT, (R-MO), HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP: I could have given some good advice here which is, you have to be curious, you have to ask all the questions you can think of and you absolutely can't decide to not look into activities because one individual's parents don't want you to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KRAUTHAMMER: This is the assassination of Caesar in the forum. He is -- if the leadership is at each other's throats, it's over for these guys.

ANGLE: What do you think -- Juan.

JUAN WILLIAMS, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, and I think that you can add in there Senator McCain who said, from his senator perch and is a punitive nominee for the political nomination said that he thought that there should be a probe led by former senators of the House of Representatives and the Republican leadership's handling of this thing.

ANGLE: That the House should let the Senate look into is this?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, it's unbelievable.

ANGLE: Oh boy.

WILLIAMS: But you sense here that the ball is rolling against Dennis Hastert as speaker of the House.

ANGLE: And one might assume the senators saying, hey, we didn't have anything to do with this, not us. It's those guys over other side.

Now Jeff, one of the interesting things here is that Denny Hastert has said, hey, look, you know, we looked at these emails, the parents said don't do anything, don't make a big deal out of this. We talked to him he had told Rush Limbaugh yesterday, we talk to him about it, he said he wouldn't do it anymore. We said don't do it with this kid, any other kid, period. Just stop. And yet, now as we look back, he didn't stop and Hastert is now.

JEFFREY BIRNBAUM, "WASHINGTON POST": Well, politics, if we needed any proof that politics is a blood sport, we don't need to look any further than today. Kirk Fordham who was the chief of staff of Mark Foley for 10 years and of the -- and of Tom Reynolds, who is the chief of the committee that is in charge of electing House Republicans, resigned today. And he is, I think, a sacrifice to the political gods, but probably not enough of one.

ANGLE: That's not going to be enough of a sacrifice?

BIRNBAUM: No, not enough of one. It's an attempt to take slate the blood thirst, I think, that is out there. The long knives are out on this, and I'm afraid that because of his accusation, despite Hastert's people's denial that Fordham says that he had told Hastert's folks about Foley's problems a long time ago, that there have been so many members now, including leaders who have said, well, we told Hastert or we told Hastert's people and nothing happened. All fingers are now pointing to the speaker, I'm afraid that the next person to be sacrificed may be the speaker.

WILLIAMS: Well, and they're also pointing at Reynolds, because Reynolds in his capacity as head of the Republican Congressional Committee, apparently knew some of this and what it looks like, therefore, is that there was a cover-up and the idea that this kind of slow morals would have been accepted.

BIRNBAUM: Whether there is a cover-up or not the political problem is so large that there has to be some other sacrifice and soon.

ANGLE: OK, when we come back with the panel, North Korea threatens a test of its nuclear weapons sending shockwaves throughout the region and warnings it could spark a nuclear arms race, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHINZO ABE, JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER: Naturally, we simply could not accept it if North Korea were to conduct a nuclear test.

JOHN HOWARD, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: We were like being told by our critics that we don't use the United Nations enough. Well, let's see the United Nations act in relation to North Korea.

JOHN BOLTON, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: We think it's going to be quite important for the council to speak very firmly, very resolutely on this and not just another knee-jerk reaction with another piece of paper.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: OK, there you get a sampling of opinion on North Korea's announcement that it is may be planning a nuclear test -- a test of its nuclear arsenal.

Charles, there was a lot of discussion of this at the U.N. today with no action on the first day. You might not have expected anything to happen right out of the box, but it is not at all clear and Bolton made clear that there is not a -- people are not of one mind in the Security Council.

KRAUTHAMMER: Nothing is going to happen at the Security Council of any importance. Nothing is going to happen in the six-power talks. What's going to happen is going to be extremely important is Japan is going to change as a result of this. We saw the new leader of Japan. He's more a nationalist. Japan is a sleeping giant, for 50 years it's been an economic power. It's now going to become a military one as a result of these Second World War it hadn't.

It's now looking at communist madman who's about to explode a nuke and, remember, when we had a country as close by as Korea is with Japan, namely Cuba, with Castro even thinking of getting his hands on nukes, President Kennedy threatened to blow up the world. Japan is going to go nuclear. That's going to be the result of this crisis and that will change the power relations indelibly in the entire Far East.

ANGLE: Well in fact, Juan, Prime Minister Abe, was asking out loud, whether or not Japan's constitution prohibited it from having a -- some sort of preemptive attack on North Korea.

WILLIAMS: And what you saw was the Japanese was asking for the U.N. Security Council to take immediate action and it was -- this is a surprise to me. John Bolton who acted with restraint.

(LAUGHTER)

To say, you know what, we need to get together and have strategy put in place. And if you look what's been going on not only with the U.N. but the Europeans in terms of trying to act in concert against Iran and its nuclear ambitions, you realize they haven't had much success in the six- party talks, as you just heard Charles say, haven't gone anywhere.

I disagree; I don't think Japan is in position to become a power. I think they have to rely on the United States and what it's going to require is the United States therefore become more involved more likely involved in direct talks with North Korea.

ANGLE: But they do have a big nuclear power industry and some believe it would be fairly ease to make that leap if they make the decision to do that.

BIRNBAUM: Yeah, I think it's impossible. It takes as long time, though, to put together a nuclear weapon and nuclear arsenal. I think in the shorter term we're talking about economic sanctions. I believe that the announcement from North Korea is at least in part a cry for help by the North Koreans. There have been sanctions put on by the United States -- economic sanctions cracking down on counterfeiting and certain improper banking practices that have really cut the cash flow that's already down to a trickle to North Korea.

I think North Korea would like those lifted and, and in exchange for not setting off a bomb, might negotiate with us for that to happen. If they do set off a weapon, however, I agree that whatever the United Nations does, it won't lead to very much, but it will lead to more economic sanctions which is a real problem for an already impoverished country.

ANGLE: Well Charles, this is a pretty bizarre situation in which the North Koreans first got upset about this thing because we cracked down on their counterfeiting of U.S. currency by putting sanction on a bank where they were laundering their money from that and other illicit activities.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, remember, the leader of Korea, when he was the son of the leader of Korea in the past, use offend to have actresses kidnapped and brought to him as mistresses. This is a loose canon to say the least. And he is a guy who, on every level is unpredictable. But what he wants here is to protect himself ultimately and his regime. If he has nukes he thinks he'll be invulnerable, but it will have the opposite effect.

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