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March 06, 2007

Special Report Roundtable - March 6

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

HUME: Former White House aide and vice presidential chief of staff, Scooter Libby, convicted today on four of the five counts against him. His lawyer says he will seek a new trial and failing that, he will appeal, maintaining that his client is innocent. The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, expressed satisfaction with the verdict, called it a sad development. Some thoughts on all this 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, Mort, any surprises in this -- in this outcome?

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Yeah. I was surprised. I thought there was a possibility that the jury might buy the busy man, bad memory defense, but they obviously didn't and, you know, they -- and in retrospect, you can see how they didn't. After all, there was this intense activity going on inside the White House after Joseph Wilson published his op-ed piece, scurrying around trying to, you know, develop information. Scooter Libby was on the phone with people from the CIA and the State Department and various -- and meeting with various reporters, and then he comes up with this story that he first learned about Valerie Plame from Tim Russert, which -- and then repeats it and -- you know, and he was so smart -- he's such a smart guy, and he was so involved in all of this that the idea that he could make a mistake like that, an innocent mistake, I guess the jury didn't...

HUME: So, why are you surprised?

KONDRACKE: Because I thought that, on the basis of reports that I'd been hearing everyday that enough people had been -- enough people had their memories challenged, that maybe the jury would buy it.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: As one of these jurors said, you know, that they had bad memories too. This was, of course, a really interesting juror who gave a press conference because he's a former journalist.

HUME: Well, let's stop for a second. Let's just hear from him. His name is Denis Collins, he's a former assistant -- reporter who worked with Bob Woodward and was a neighbor of Tim Russert's, he nonetheless made it onto the jury. He was the only juror who talked today, and this a little bit of what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DENIS COLLINS, LIBBY TRIAL JUROR: There were just so many of those things that -- it was just very hard not to believe that he -- how he could member it on a Tuesday, and then forget it on a Thursday and then member it two days later.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That sort of reflects what Mort was saying about Libby having insufficiently steeped in this. According to the testimony, it was a little hard to believe that he could have forgotten where he heard this, although witness after witness in the case had forgotten all kinds of things and some people recanted even the testimony they'd given at trial.

LIASSON: Well, the prosecutor did a good job of showing how many times he had been informed about this. And also, the other thing that I thought was interesting about Collins' press conference is he said at one point, "We all looked at each other and wondered why are we here? Why are we doing this with this guy?" You know, that he doesn't think.

HUME: They felt sorry for him.

LIASSON: They felt sorry for him and it was clear that he hadn't been charged with the underlying crime, leaking her identity. But look, this is an abject lesson, I mean, do not make false statements to government and federal officials.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: You know, but that's a good point, thought, that they thought, you know, why's this guy here? They thought it was a minor case, a peripheral case, the one against Scooter Libby. And I, frankly, don't think the prosecutor would have brought that case at all, if the larger case involving whether the White House had mounted a conspiracy to leak the name of an undercover CIA agent. Of course, that collapsed, there was no evidence for that. So, what does the prosecutor do, they go with the only case they have, this was the best case. It doesn't mean that that's illegitimate, it just means that the case was marginal, peripheral, and the jurors recognized that, as well.

KONDRACKE: But this, Collins, gave a great gift to the Democrats in using the term "fall guy" for Libby as though, somehow Dick Cheney's involved or Karl Rove is involved. And the Democrats.

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: Wait. I know, the Democrats are going berserk on this. You know, it's deeper involvement and, you know, it suggests all kind of.

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: No, wait a minute. The question is here, can the Democrats figure out some way to subpoena people, get this into the investigative stream in Congress, put people under oath and try to develop the story even further? So far, no indications that they can.

LIASSON: And why should they? They are very, very busy with other things. But look, the thing about the fall guy that was part of the defense. The problem is, they didn't present any evidence for it, but they did -- they did make that argument.

BARNES: It was -- I think that was something the defense shouldn't have done. If you're going to throw something out, you at least have to provide some evidence to prove the point. They didn't prove that point at all that he was the fall guy, there was nothing in the trial.

HUME: They kind of argued it without evidence. Didn't they?

BARNES: Look, I know of no evidence.

HUME: That's like the jury -- sounds like the jury bought it, though, it didn't help.

BARNES: Well, one guy mentioned it. I don't know that that amounts to much.

HUME: All right, now.

BARNES: Now, I want to say one other thing. Look, all of that scurrying around at the White House that Mort talked about, what were they trying to do? Joe Wilson had accused the White House of fudging on the intelligence, stuff they knew was true that they were going with. The truth is, they were trying to rebut, very legitimately, his story, Joe Wilson's story, which turned out to be almost completely false.

KONDRACKE: What they should have done is to hold a press conference and say here's what we know about Joe Wilson. They didn't have to out Valerie Plame. They should have done it in the open instead of doing it by leaking. And furthermore, they shouldn't have been that consumed with this story because nuclear were not the major WMD case, here.

LIASSON: You know what? What they did was not the problem. What the problem was that Lewis Libby did not tell the truth to the Grand Jury or to federal prosecutors.

HUME: Question: What is the ultimate disposition of this case? Does anybody expect the judge to grant a new trial?

KONDRACKE: No.

LIASSON: No, but they'll appeal.

HUME: Does anybody think that the case will succeed on appeal?

LIASSON: Probably not, but the third outcome is.

HUME: The third outcome.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: Yeah, yeah, of course.

HUME: Is it likely that the president will pardon him?

LIASSON: Yes.

HUME: Do you agree?

KONDRACKE: I'd be amazed if he didn't.

BARNES: Look, it was a minor case. He did not -- he didn't seriously impede the investigation, he's been a loyal and effective member of this administration. There's every reason to pardon him.

HUME: And when will this happen?

BARNES: It'll happen January 19, 2009. Or maybe January 20, 2009.

KONDRACKE: (INAUDIBLE)

BARNES: Yeah, that's when you do the pardoning.

HUME: When we come back with our panel, the president names a commission to look into the problems at Walter Reed and elsewhere, perhaps. That is our next topic. Stick around.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Some of our troops at Walter Reed have experienced bureaucratic delays and living conditions that are less than they deserve. It's unacceptable to me, it's unacceptable to you, it's unacceptable to our country, and it's not going to continue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And in furtherance of that objective, the president today, named the two co-heads of his bipartisan commission to investigate the conditions at Walter Reed and perhaps elsewhere and the bureaucratic red tape associated with them. As you can see, Republican Bob Dole, Democrat and former HHS secretary Donna Shalala.

What about this whole Walter Reed episode? We know that it principally revolved, in terms of the conditions out there, around one building in a very vast complex and we know also that the larger problem may indeed have been the bureaucracy involved in the whole healthcare system affecting veterans. So, where does this leave us? Of course, we're hearing now, that -- I'm not -- I mean, you never saw such bipartisan immediate agreement on anything in the recent history of Washington. Everybody deplores this, everybody wants something done about it, everybody's investigating it. Does that mean that the story is bigger or smaller?

KONDRACKE: Well, look, I think it's because it's so indefensible on its face and there is so much evidence about this. The Washington post, you know, ran a series of stories. But Salon magazine had been doing this a long time before and you'd have thought that somebody would have looked into it, some congressional -- as a matter of fact, there are some congressional investigative committees that claimed that they actually did, but it never got into public consciousness. And it's certainly never affected the way that the Pentagon ran things.

Now, people have compared this to the Abu Ghraib, which clearly is not the same as, because that involved malevolence...

BARNES: (SNICKER)

HUME: No, they compared it to Katrina.

KONDRACKE: Well, Katrina does apply in some regard.

(CROSSTALK)

LIASSON: That's actually a more legitimate comparison.

KONDRACKE: .incompetence, and it's worse than Katrina.

BARNES: (SNICKER)

KONDRACKE: .in that, this is a totally federal responsibility, you can't put this off on the mayor of Washington or the governor, or somebody else, this is all federal. And this is -- These are people, you know, not people that didn't get out of town because they were warned, it's wasn't a natural disaster, this is government policy at work or not work...

BARNES: Mort, that doesn't mean that it's worse than Katrina, that means that it's different from Katrina. Please.

LIASSON: OK, it's different, but it's very bad for.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: You know what this is? You know what this is? People have discovered something that I experience for the first 19 years of my life.

HUME: How so?

BARNES: This is called government run healthcare.

HUME: Well, how did you.

BARNES: Because my father was in the military, I was a dependent and I was in the Army for two years. That -- government run healthcare is very bureaucratic. In 19 years, I never saw the same doctor twice. And that's what happens. You get -- there's all kinds of the same paperwork and so on, and some of the facilities get run down. There's no excuse for it, but it's built into the system. The doctors are fine, they are passing through, they go on to great careers as civilian doctors, but when they're involved in this system, you wind up with things like Walter Reed. Now these members of Congress are saying, you know, it's not just Walter Reed, it may be the whole military system. Well, no kidding. This is what so many of these liberals want to give the rest of America. It's horrible.

LIASSON: Well wait a second. Wait a second. It's hard to imagine who else is going to provide care for these severely wounded veterans. And as a matter of fact, some of the care they get is great in terms of the -- just the battlefield medicine and the fact that so many more of them are living now then would have in wars passed.

HUME: We are having lower death rates.

LIASSON: Yeah, that part is very.

HUME: Many fewer injured soldiers die because of the quality of care they're getting.

LIASSON: But look, I don't think -- I think there is a consensus, this was a horrible thing. This was the second bad story that the Bush administration is dealing with this week if you want to count Lewis Libby as the other. And, you know, they do need to fix this and in this case, as Mort said, there is no blame to go around.

HUME: But what about this idea, though, Mara, that overall here, that this is what happens when government runs something. It always involves all kinds of regulations and the regulations lead to forms...

LIASSON: No, this is different.

KONDRACKE: Government can do things well and this is something...

HUME: Well, give me an example, then of the government run healthcare system that's worked very well. In which country? Are you talking about the British or the Canadians?

KONDRACKE: No wait a minute. Just a second. The Medicare prescription drug program, which everybody said was going to be a disaster has proved to be working, now.

HUME: But that's simply a -- that is a transfer payment deal, though, Mort, that's...

KONDRACKE: You asked about.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: What about Medicare? Medicare is one that works well because it allows people to choose their own private doctors.

LIASSON: Well, these are veterans who have.

BARNES: You could not have to go through a government bureaucracy for a month or two or three in order to see a doctor and get treatment, Mort.

KONDRACKE: Bob Scales, our military analyst, major general, says that the basic problem here is that the Army is underfunded. And I believe that the Army was underfunded and that's part of the problem here.

HUME: You heard it from Mort who heard it from Bob Scales, don't forget it.

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