Special Report Roundtable - February 9

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN CARL LEVIN (D), MICHIGAN: Unfortunately, the damage has already been done. Senior administration officials used the twisted intelligence produced by the Feith office in making the case for the Iraq war.

SEN JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALABAMA: The CIA admitted a number of those points were valid and accepted and it made the report better, and the report would not have been made better had it not been for Feith's staff digging in and finding the information and bringing it forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: OK, sounds like two different reports they're commenting on, but it actually is the same thing from the inspector general about prewar intelligence involving al Qaeda and Iraq.

Now, some analytical observations from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call; and syndicated columnist, Charles Krauthammer -- FOX NEWS contributors, all.

So Charles, this was to do with intelligence on al Qaeda, it was not one of the bigger points in the debate, but it was one of the points that was argued over. What is this whole flap about?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, my favorite part of this report are the charges that the Democrats are making is that the Feith office in the Defense Department produced intelligence estimates that were "inconsistent" with the intelligence community consensus at the time. Now, this is a hilarious charge, because it makes sacrosanct the intelligence community's consensus of 2002, which we now know was about the most wrong, wildly-inaccurate in the history of intelligence. It told us about weapons of mass destruction, which, of course, did not exist. All of a sudden, delivering an analysis, which is contrary or dissenting is an offence. After all, did not the 9/11 Commission advocate a complete reorganization of the intelligence agencies and as a way to avoid the group think that had produced these inaccurate consensus of the intelligence community. So attacking a person who produces a descending opinion and view, I think is the height of the...

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: Look, the intelligence consensus was wrong on the worst case side, right? They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were no weapons of mass destruction. Feith analyses were even worst case in almost every case.

And you know, this reminds me of during the Cold War, this was a George Bush the first when he was in the CIA, set up an A-team/B-team analysis to look over intelligence and see whether it was right about the Soviets and it turned out that the B-team was often right about what the Soviets were developing.

In this case Feith was sort of the B-team in the Pentagon and was feeding this stuff to an already-overwrought administration which was afraid that Saddam Hussein was going to transfer weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda and that the next -- there was going to be a nuclear bomb, so Feith is pumping this stuff out and apparently, I think, the more interesting case is not whether this was used to convince the public, but whether it was what Cheney believed and what Rumsfeld believed and Wolfowitz believed and the president believed, because it was wrong.

ANGLE: Now Fred, I want to ask you a slightly different question, here. Senator Levin...

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: We can talk about the already overwrought administration that Mort was talking about...

ANGLE: Well, go ahead.

BARNES: I don't know where he gets that from. Look, I think one thing we learned, as Charles was saying, after the wrong intelligence in the intelligence community's consensus is that we need alternative lines of information coming in. That doesn't mean they have to be right, but they can -- but they certainly need to be heard, and Feith was heard. He was more right than the intelligence community's consensus on ties between Saddam Hussein and terrorists. Of course he was, mort. Read the Steve Hayes' book.

KONDRACKE: I have read all of Steve Hayes arguments and...

BARNES: Look, there are all these hedge words used by groups like the 9/11 Commission that says there was no operational ties -- there were not operational ties...

ANGLE: All right, well let me...

BARNES: There weren't collaborative ties, but there was certainly a heck of a lot of contacts between Saddam Hussein's government and intelligence people and al Qaeda.

ANGLE: All right, there was one other thing about this and that is Senator Levin said today this was highly disturbing that this was the argument used to make the sale to the American people. But Senator Rockefeller, at the time of the debate, made a very different point. Let's listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN JAY ROCKEFELLER (D), WEST VIRGINIA: I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the threat posed to America, by Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, is so serious that despite the risks, and we should not minimize the risks, we must authorize the president to take the necessary steps to deal with that threat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANGLE: OK, that sounds, Charles, like people were much more moved by weapons of mass destruction than they were about any argument about al Qaeda.

KRAUTHAMMER: Absolutely. And if you look at the presentation that Colin Powell made at the U.N., it was almost all about weapons of mass destruction. The Democratic intention here is to pretend that they were misled into war. This is a body -- the majority of Senate Democrats voted in favor of the war, looking at the same intelligence, making the same errors and the idea that somehow there was a distortion, a deliberate one, is a myth that Democrats want to create, as a way to vindicate having approved the war in the first place.

ANGLE: OK, next, we'll look back at what happened in the Libby trial. The prosecution has rested. So, what do we now know about the facts in the trial? We'll have some information you hear won't here anyplace else, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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PATRICK FITZGERALD, SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: When you were interviewed by the FBI, first interview (INAUDIBLE), did you understand that if you had told reporters that Wilson's wife had worked with the CIA, based upon knowledge you had learned from the government or from conversations with Vice President Cheney, that you could have committed a crime?

LEWIS "SCOOTER" LIBBY, FRM CHIEF OF STAFF: I understand it to be classified information, so my understanding would be if I didn't think it was classified, if it wasn't presented in this classified information, if I wasn't intending to release classified information, that it wouldn't be a crime.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

ANGLE: OK, there you hear Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald asking questions of Scooter Libby. Now, one of the interesting and one of the central issues in this trial, Charles, is that -- is what Scooter Libby's frame of mind was at the time.

Now Prosecutor Fitzgerald has made a lot of ground by saying, look, you say you remember great deals in this conversation that you think you had with Tim Russert, you remember all those details, yet you remember nothing about a bunch of other conversations. On the other hand, Fitzgerald has to convince the jury that someone like Libby would have a reason to lie. And he's saying here, "I didn't know that her position was classified," and if you don't know, you can't knowingly disclose someone's position. We don't know whether she was classified or not, but certainly his frame of mind was that he hadn't done anything to break the law.

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, if you want to establish perjury, and we know that some of the statements that Scooter had made were not right, so it's a question of was it prudery, was it intentional. And if you want to prove intent, you have to show a motive. And if Libby had assumed that either Wilson's wife was not a protected individual, as it were, or that it was either unclear, or the information he had heard about it was not protected information, classified, then there was not a crime, and he would not have had a motive, but I think the even stronger argument is, and it's the argument, obviously, he'll make when he presents his defense is that this is a man with -- who's receiving hundreds of calls every day on lots of issues and ask yourself, any of us who've been looking at this issue for months and years who were involved in studying the Plame-Wilson affair, how many of us remember where and how we heard about her name for the first time, I'll bet you almost no one. It's not surprising that he would either have gotten wrong or misremembered how he had heard about it.

ANGLE: Mort, let me ask you this. One of the first people he asked about, you know, who was this that went on this trip and how did he get sent was Marc Grossman at the State Department. He went to the intelligence unit at the State Department, called INR, and asked them. Marc Grossman got back a document and it referred to Wilson's wife having sent him and called her a managerial type at the CIA. If he believed that, why would he lie?

KONDRACKE: If that's what he thought she was, and that was what was in his head, then he wouldn't have had a reason to lie. On the other hand, look, there were other reasons for him to think he could have gotten himself into trouble for being...

ANGLE: What?

KONDRACKE: Well, the White House was saying anybody who released this name is going to get fired. That's what the president was saying, that's what the...

ANGLE: Wouldn't it better -- be better to be fired than be incarcerated or go lie to the Grand Jury?

KONDRACKE: Well, no, but you know, you don't want to lose your job and so you don't want to be fingered as the guy who did. I mean, this is a plausible reason. Further, more the CIA had sent a referral to the Justice Department saying that this was a potential criminal matter.

ANGLE: All right. Well, I got about 30 seconds left, Fred.

BARNES: I think the White House was talking was if anybody leaked it to Bob Novak for his column that made it public, then they get in trouble. But Scooter Libby knew he wasn't the one who leaked it to Bob Novak. He may not have known who did, but we wasn't the one, so I don't think -- I think that motive falls apart.