Special Report Roundtable - May 18

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CARL LEVIN, (D) MI: Would you say that there's privacy concerns involved in this program?

GENERAL MICHAEL HAYDEN, CIA DIRECTOR NOMINEE: I could certainly understand why -- why someone would be concerned about this. And that .

LEVIN: That's not my question, general. It's a direct question.

HAYDEN: Sure.

LEVIN: In your judgment are there .

HAYDEN: You want me to say yes?

LEVIN: No, I want you to say what you believe.

HAYDEN: Yes, sir, and here's what I believe. Clearly the privacy of American citizens is a concern constantly, and it's a concern in this program, and a concern in everything that we've done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And that is how it went for Michael Hayden before the Senate Intelligence Committee today as it examined his nomination to be head of the CIA. Most of the questions as you could probably tell from that line of questions revolved around his role as the head previously of the NSA, which as we reported here and elsewhere, has conducted various surveillance programs, some involving the phone conversations of American citizens into and out of this country looking for terrorist connections.

Some analytical observations on this from Mort Kondracke, the executive director of "Roll Call," Nina Easton, Washington bureau chief of "Fortune" magazine. And the syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, Fox News contributors all. Well, first of all, what about all of this, what about what we learned about who had been briefed and what they had ever said by way of objection to these programs from Hayden today. What about it, Mort?

MORT KONDRACKE, "ROLL CALL": Well, the good stuff apparently all got covered in closed session. I mean every time someone asked him a really interesting question about renditioning or water boarding of prisoners or details about the NSA program, he said I'll discuss that with you in closed session. So that would have been interesting to be there, but we couldn't talk about it else we'd have to be shot.

But I thought that he was a strong witness. He was candid, as that -- as that exchange with Levin indicated. I mean he said that there's privacy concerns and we're bumping up against people's privacy all the time. And he said that he had objected or didn't like the separate intelligence apparat (ph) that Douglas Feith was running at the Pentagon for Don Rumsfeld at that time. He seemed to be independent of Rumsfeld. He's not in the chain of command, and so on. I think it was a strong performance.

NINA EASTON, "FORTUNE": I thought it was predictable. I mean, the stock questions by largely Democrats and kind of stock answers by Hayden. We learned very little else, as you said, in the open session, about the NSA wiretapping controversy. He did allude to the fact, talked about the fact that he had in those first weeks after 9/11, he and the then CIA director George Tenet talked about is something like this technologically feasible and then they briefed the agency's workers on that, and so we know that he was a principal architect of it. I thought more interesting lost in this was the CIA itself. The agency that he is going to be taking over because he did outline in a little bit of detail his concerns and his desire to make this -- the nation's spy agency more risk taking.

He talked about wanting to inject a expeditionary mentality into the agency. Basically getting guys out from the desks and out into the field.

And then the other thing that was interesting was that -- I don't think that he's going to be getting a total free rein on this. Even Senator Pat Roberts, the chair of the committee, Republican chair of the committee, and a fan of Hayden said, look, you say you don't want to be second-guessed which is what Hayden said in his opening statement.

Well, you have to earn that. This is an agency that, as Roberts put it, it was on an assumption train putting out that -- the national intelligence estimate leading up to the war in Iraq, just assuming that things had been the same since the Persian Gulf War, along with a string of other mishaps by the CIA..

HUME: Did you hear anything that suggested that this nomination is in any confirmation trouble?

EASTON: I didn't.

HUME: Charles?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: It's not. He'll be overwhelmingly approved.

But it's interesting because this is ostensibly about the CIA, which is what his job is supposed to be. But these hearings really are a surrogate for a debate about the NSA which is what he headed before. And he headed it at the time of the two programs that everybody has been talking about and concerned about.

When the first leak happened, and we learned about the NSA listening in on al Qaeda calling the U.S., the administration admitted it, came out and defended it, and won the national debate, the public opinion instantly and quickly and the Democrats ran away.

But when the second leak appeared which is just a week or two ago about monitoring the pattern of phone calls in the United States, the administration has denied, or at least not confirmed, obviously, it won't deny it, but it won't, as Tony Snow danced around it in his briefing, he said issue, I won't confirm nor deny. So it hasn't defended itself on this.

HUME: One reason may be, Charles, we now have the original report involved three phone companies, AT&T and BellSouth and Verizon. Two of the three have now denied elements the story, that there was any surrender of mass amounts of information about telephone calls to the NSA.

And also that they were doing so as the "USA Today" story alleged under a contract that they had. And BellSouth has now demanded a retraction.

KRAUTHAMMER: It may not be a surrender, it may not have been a contract, but it's hard to imagine, it's a complete invention or the administration would have denied it. So something happened, and the administration will not talk about it.

So enter Hayden who comes in here and essentially defends it indirectly, a, indicating that a lot of people in Congress knew about it and nobody had ever objected. So the whole Democratic shocked, shocked to hear this is happening and it's a fraud and a deception and real hypocrisy.

And, secondly, in his demeanor in the seriousness in the way that he presented himself, and talking about his reaction after 9/11, scrambling to find new ways of detecting terrorists, he came across as somebody who cares about his country, who cares about privacy, is not cavalier, and he will not abuse a program like this. He won the debate right there.

KONDRACKE: Right. Look, the CIA needs to be aggressive. He's clearly an aggressive guy, 9/11 happens and he goes in and invents this is new kind of program, and that's the kind of imagination and energy that you want in the CIA.

HUME: When we come back, the immigration debate in the Senate. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS, (R) GA: It all comes down to the simple question of whether or not you oppose or favor amnesty.

SEN. DAVID VITTER, (R) LA: I invite members top look at the definition of amnesty. I invite members to study the details of this bill. Because the American people certainly will and come to the clear conclusion that that is what it is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: well, will they really? Well, he's not the only one. Those two senators aren't the only ones saying this about what the president has proposed and what the Senate has been working on this week.

Listen to what senator, I mean Congressman Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said about what the president wants.

"What he is proposing is" -- there it is again, the A word, "amnesty." That was in an interview with a hometown newspaper that was published this morning.

Now question about this. We hear this word amnesty all the time. We looked it up, Webster says that amnesty is sort of wholesale granting of a pardon to a large group of people. We looked up pardon to make sure that we didn't have it wrong, and pardon, from what we can tell, is when you're excused without a penalty. So do we have amnesty? Is it fair to say this amnesty.

KONDRACKE: No, it's clearly not amnesty. There was an amnesty in 1986. Everybody who had been in the country as of a certain date in the 1986 law was granted a pass. And was put on a track to citizenship. No penalty, no questions asked, no fines, no requirements, no nothing.

In this case you're going to have to pay a fine, you're going to have to have worked solidly, you're going to have to have paid taxes, you' re going to have to learn English, you're going to have to stand at the end of the line, you are not going to get an automatic green card and stuff like that, and that's, you know, earned legalization.

And, you know, somebody in yesterday's debate, either Lindsay Graham or John McCain said, amnesty was what Jimmy Carter did for people who went to Canada and deserted, you know, their military obligations in the Vietnam War. He said, you're pardoned.

HUME: Ollie-ollie-in-free.

KONDRACKE: Yeah. This is not that.

EASTON: On some level it's an earned amnesty and of course this is an incredibly dangerous word that this president has been fearful of and dancing around.

HUME: Well, is he dancing around it or are they throwing it around without using it correctly?

EASTON: As I said, I think it's an earned amnesty. It's not a blanket amnesty.

HUME: Earned amnesty is an oxymoron, isn't it?

EASTON: Maybe that's the case, but it's -- it still is in the minds of the conservatives .

HUME: We understand that. That's what we're talking about.

EASTON: But what I wanted to say that the president originally was very focused on a guest worker program.

HUME: Correct.

EASTON: The legal path to citizenship piece of this was something that came later in -- he came to embrace .

HUME: He was for it from the beginning though.

EASTON: But he came to embrace it and push that much later as he did in his speech.

HUME: What about it, Charles.

KRAUTHAMMER: If the offense is illegal entry into the United States, for which the penalty is deportation, it's amnesty, because you are here illegally and you don't get deported. So in that narrow sense, yes, if, however, we are talking about the attainment of citizenship, that's a completely different issue. And it requires all kinds of stuff you've got to do. But, yes, it is amnesty on the original offense.

HUME: All right. Now, where is it going?

KRAUTHAMMER: I think that it looks as if the Senate is getting a little bit tough or enforcement .

HUME: A little bit?

KRAUTHAMMER: A little bit, a piece of a fence. Half of the length of the House fence. Yes, I think that's good, and it's trying to narrow the pool of people who will get citizenship ultimately. However, I think that the narrowing is rather trivial and ultimately .

HUME: The narrowing is from 325,000 to 200,000 per year, correct?

KRAUTHAMMER: Yes.

HUME: And instead of going up 20 percent a year, there's no growth, right?

KRAUTHAMMER: It's narrowing in requirements, you know, how many felons, what you have -- what kinds of offenses exclude you, etc. All of this stuff, I think, is going to end up being immaterial and there's going loopholes. Essentially all of that millions with the few exceptions are going to end up citizens, and I'm not against that if you enforce security, if you've got a fence that stops the new illegals.

HUME: Is this bill, the Senate bill, and combined with what the president says he's for, created a bill that is tough enough on enforcement that members of the House who are for enforcement only might be willing to accept something else besides enforcement to get what the bills would likely provide?

KRONDACKE: If the president puts the pressure on, the answer is, some. There are people like Sensenbrenner who are never going to be for it, and even some -- Roy Blunt who is the House majority whip would be a very interesting case. He's been around the country to more than 100 districts campaigning for people and he says that every single question, one or two, is about immigration in these town hall meetings. Two in Seattle even. And, you know, what he's going to do is -- will tell us a lot.