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February 07, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - February 7

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

WILSON: And there you see on your screen the very large imposing figure of NBC's Tim Russert on crutches because he stumbled over his dog recently, but he's at the federal courthouse where he testified in the Libby trial, today. That's topic No. 1 today for our all-star panel joining us now with their analytical observations. Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Morton Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call; and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio -- and of course, all are FOX NEWS contributors.

Well, there seems to be a difference of opinion about what Russert remembers about a certain conversation he had with Scooter Libby and about what Scooter Libby testified to before the grand jury. That's really at the heart of this whole matter. Mara, your take on all this?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Well, I mean, Scooter Libby has said that he learned about Valerie Plame from reporters and from Tim Russert and Tim Russert says he didn't talk about Valerie Plame at all with him.

Now, you know, what Libby is on trial for is perjury, not for disclosing Valerie Plame's name, but for lying to the grand jury about it and what the prosecution is trying to do is poke holes in his testimony and they've had a variety of witnesses who've contradicted what Libby has said, whether that adds up to something that will convince the jury that he intentionally lied or, as the defense will try to prove, that he just had a faulty memory and couldn't remember exactly where he heard it.

WILSON: Mort, your take?

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: About the same. Look, what strikes me is that there was intense activity in the vice president's office over this op-ed piece by Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband, tried to debunk the story that Saddam Hussein was looking for uranium. And there were any number of conversations that Libby had with various people from the vice president to Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary, to aides in the White House to CIA people and State Department people, many of them involved Valerie Plame's name -- all of which Libby couldn't remember. But he did remember -- he thought he remembered this Tim Russert thing. Now, if that's the case that's the prosecution's case, that, you know, how could he possibly have forgotten all about this...

WILSON: Mort, you're a reported, right?

KONDRACKE: Yeah.

WILSON: You do a little reporting around this town.

KONDRACKE: There's lots of things I can't remember.

WILSON: How many conversations do you have in a given day?

KONDRACKE: Yes, lot of them, except...

WILSON: Do you remember them all?

KONDRACKE: Well, there are some I remember, and the ones I remember are the ones were there is great intensity around them or things that or memorable. Now, in this case, this is the prosecution's -- that he could not have forgotten that he had various other conversations. Right?

Now he claims that he did forget, and maybe he did forget, and when the defense comes, they're going to show how busy he was. Furthermore, as Mara says, they've got to prove that if he did misstate that he did it knowingly and intentionally meaning to lie. And it seems to me they've got to prove a motive.

WILSON: Fred,

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: Yes, a good question there about remembering. Now, why do reporters take around a notepad? Because you do have trouble remembering and of course you want to get the quotes right, as well, but it's because your memory isn't that great and you want to get it accurately, so you do take notes.

Obviously, the testimony made by Tim Russert was not helpful to the Libby defense; it was more helpful to the prosecution. On the other hand, there have been any number of other witnesses who have had very, very fuzzy memories.

Just this week, we had an FBI agent, Debra Bond, come back and say well, she had mis-testified the week before when she said it was Karl Rove who originally told columnist Robert Novak about Valerie Plame and, you know, that's what's behind this case.

You had when Judith Miller was there, of the New York Times -- or use to be with the New York Times, when -- last week, I guess -- she -- there was a meeting that -- or a phone call with Libby that she remembered that she didn't remember, now she has remembered, so there are a lot of faulty memories, and that is, I think, the core of the defense case. Look at all these other people, they couldn't remember correctly, either. And why would you expect scooter Libby to?

WILSON: The thing that always comes back to me on this, and I don't - - it does sound like it was a rather intense conversation that was going on there, the kind of conversations we all in the news business, get from time to time, people complaining about the coverage they were getting, at least that's Tim Russet's take on it -- but I got to tell you, maybe it's my dancing age or maybe it's just the fact that we, in this business, get so overwhelmed at times -- events tend to blur for together for me, and I have a hard time remembering which of the five conversations I had from somebody when something was said. Do you find that to be the case?

BARNES: I do, and there's a good point. You know, sometimes I know this is why you have people who fact check your stories. When I have put - - written things from memory, sometimes they turn out to be wrong. When I do them -- when I check my notes, I can get them right, but sometimes I'll just write them from memory and that's why it's good to have fact checkers, because I get them wrong.

WILSON: All right, we'll continue to watch what happens in the Libby trial.

When we come back with our panel, is Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy helping Republicans rally their troops? That topic is up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I am not running for president to put Band-Aids on our promise. I am running to ensure that we actually address them and meet them and get results here in our country, because we have to prove to ourselves, as well as the rest of the world that we're still the most creative, most innovative, most affective nation in the history of the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILSON: That's Senator Hillary Clinton speaking, recently, at a campaign event, and let me just throw up a graphic here, that tells you about where she is number-wise, in the race according to a WMRU poll. Senator Clinton has a -- in the New Hampshire Democratic primary has 35 percent of the vote in the poll, and Obama 21, Edwards 16. She's far and away ahead right now, but not unreachable.

The question comes, though, the fact that she is emerging as such a strong Democratic frontrunner, some people believe it has kind of energized the Republican side of the equation to get busy -- Fred.

BARNES: When you look at the Republicans, they look anything but energized; they're still down in the dumps. They -- I don't think they're paying much attention to Hilary. They're just trying to climb out of the ditch. There's a real fog, there's a real depression among Republicans right now, more in the House than the Senate and the grassroots. I mean, this was a tough election for Republicans, the -- I think a lot of them believed they would be in the majority for centuries and they didn't achieve it.

You know, it's also -- there was a piece, I forget where, saying that Republicans think that the nomination of Hillary is inevitable. I don't think they believe that. I talked to a lot of them who think that she is going to have a lot of trouble winning the nomination, as formidable as she is and she's quite formidable.

You know, Democrats have a history of, you know, picking somebody in the back of the pack who's far from being the frontrunner and then nominating that person, whether George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, even Bill Clinton.

LIASSON: You know, I think -- it's interesting because Democrats don't see her as a prohibitive frontrunner. As a matter of fact, she seems like a vulnerable frontrunner. However, she does have a tremendous amount of money, support inside the party, she's got Bill Clinton, you know, she is kind of the established candid and she is leading in the polls, there's no doubt about that. But, I think she's vulnerable. You know, I think that the net roots, if you can even make a generalization about them, are more interested in Edwards and waiting to see what Obama will do.

That's the other thing, Obama is a big question mark. You know, he's doing very well in the polls. This weekend he's announcing his candidacy, going right to Iowa and then eventually to New Hampshire. And Obama, right now is kind of a blank slate, an empty vessel where all sorts of Democrats are pouring their hopes and dreams into. Once -- if he can come forward with some very specific policies and really go head-to-head with here, he might give her a real race.

KONDRACKE: You know, what I suspect is happening here, this story about the Republicans regarding her as inevitable; I think that they are trying to use her as a motivation device, you know, that she's -- the Clintons' have always been the bete noire of the Republican Party and so they'll revive all this stuff. Tom DeLay is talking about how she's inevitable and all that and they want to revisit all of the reasons that Republicans used to hate the Clintons and see that as the future and so that they'll begin to start organizing again and fundraising again, and stuff like that.

She's not inevitable. You know, a couple of weeks ago we were all discussing how Democrats were all saying she's unelectable. I mean, it's - - we've got miles to go here, and there'll be a lot of debates, there will be a lot of fundraising, which she's ahead in, granted, she's ahead in the polls, but you know, there's miles to go, as I said.

LIASSON: And you know, and she still is the only candidate out there who has this ceiling where polls show that something like 45 percent of the American people say they wouldn't vote for her under any circumstance. Now, maybe she can turn some of that around, but that's an unusual piece of -- unusual burden to carry around with. Nobody else has that.

BARNES: And she does have a tough opponents, I mean, Obama is, as Mara said, you know, I mean, Democrats of all stripes, you know, just put their hopes and their ideas into -- as if he is the champion of them, and Edwards has been in Iowa campaigning very, very strongly for a long time.

WILSON: And doing well there.

BARNES: If he wins there, that would be a real setback for Hillary.

WILSON: But, the fact of the matter is when you look at the history of these types of campaigns, it's the person who gets all the buzz early is very rarely the person who ends up with the nomination.

LIASSON: Yeah, look at Howard Dean.

BARNES: (INAUDIBLE) Democrats.

KONDRACKE: And you know, it's a very long shot, but you could really, have, say Edwards winning the Iowa, Hillary winning New Hampshire, Obama winning South Carolina, maybe Richardson winning Nevada, and go into Super Tuesday -- Super-duper Tuesday, you know, with no frontrunner.

BARNES: Yeah. He's dreaming.

LIASSON: What fun.

KONDRACKE: I'd love it.

WILSON: All I can say is, boy wouldn't that be fun?

LIASSON: Yeah.

WILSON: That's what we got in this business for. Thank you very much. Good discussion.

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