CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Senator Rand Paul on the Middle East, Airport Security, and the Economy

Interview

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BLITZER: All right, Nima Elbagir at Sharm el-Sheikh Airport for us, Nima, thanks very much.

Joining us now, Senator and Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul of Kentucky. He's a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Foreign Relations Committee.

Senator, thanks very much for joining us.

And I want to get your reaction to this France 2, our CNN affiliate, reporting that investigators are now convinced it was a bomb that brought down the plane. Are you similarly convinced?

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I don't know if I'm enough of a bomb expert or have enough of the details to know.

But I have said for a long time that I think one of our biggest threats is really coming in from outside the country. We need to be careful with domestic flights, but really I think our biggest threat is that I don't think airports around the world will ever have the degree of security we have and that we do need to be concerned about international flights and we do need to spend time on manifests of who is coming to visit our country.

But, really, as you mentioned in the piece leading up to this, some of it is also employees, the people handling baggage. We have had some lapses in this country on who is actually in the baggage handling area. I think in foreign countries, I can't imagine they have nearly the sophistication of security we have.

So, yes, we do need to be concerned.

BLITZER: How should the U.S. respond, Senator, if this was an ISIS attack?

PAUL: I don't know if there is one response to say this is what we're going to do.

I have said all along that we shouldn't be arming radical jihadists around the world, that we never should have armed al Qaeda in Syria or al-Nusra in Syria and/or ISIS in Syria. ISIS rides around in a billion dollars worth of our Humvees. They have a billion dollars of U.S. cash they are paying their soldiers with.

We have made some real mistakes in that area. And now I think there really can be a concerted effort to wipe out ISIS. It's going to involve the Shiites in Baghdad, the Iraqi government, probably will involve Iran, probably will involve Russia in some way or form, regardless of what we want, and it may well involve Assad as well.

But the thing is, is that we do need to unify and say enough is enough. Let's stamp out this barbarity.

BLITZER: And you say the U.S. armed these terrorist groups, al- Nusra or ISIS, because it was arming Iraqi allies, if you will, or others who simply abandoned their weapons, fled and as a result the terrorists got the weapons? Is that the point you're trying to make?

PAUL: Well, we did it twofold.

Some of the arms came in through Syria, where we armed allies of ISIS and ISIS either took the weapons, or in some cases I think Qatar and Saudi Arabia may have given arms directly to ISIS. And then some of the weapons came from Mosul, where we had given them to our Shiite allies who turned out to be not so good with holding onto their weapons.

And so really it's a compilation of mistakes, but every American ought to wonder about -- we fought a war. We lost nearly 5,000 of our young men and women and we spent a trillion dollars in Iraq. And now Iraq looks at us and says, oh, Iran is our friend and Russia is our friend. You really got to wonder how ungrateful Iraq is for us liberating them.

BLITZER: We are going to have much more, Senator. Stand by. I want to get your thoughts on U.S. airline security right now, what needs to be done, also the security of those 700-plus U.S. soldiers in Sinai right now, very volatile region. How secure are they? Should they stay there or should the U.S. pull them out?

Much more with Senator Rand Paul when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [18:18:51]

BLITZER: We're following the breaking news in the Russian airliner disaster.

The first analysis of the jet's black boxes reportedly confirm that the jet was brought down by a bomb. And, tonight, the United States is stepping up security for some U.S.-bound flights out of the Middle East.

We're back with Senator and Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul.

Senator, in the past, and correct me if I'm wrong, I believe you said you think it's time for the U.S. to end that TSA, the Transportation Security Administration. If you were president, would you do away with the TSA?

PAUL: You know, I would privatize it.

And I think if you direct security to the monetary success of companies, they do a pretty good job. We have a lot of security that is done by private agencies. In fact, we did until 9/11 have this.

I think the breakdown has always been not so much airport security, but it's the directed intelligence towards trying to stop people. We had evidence that two of the hijackers were in the country, and the CIA didn't tell the FBI this.

We captured one of the hijackers a month in advance. So I think it's doing a better job with targeted intelligence and not spending so much of our time with blanket intelligence of everyone.

[18:20:00]

The Boston bomber, we were tipped off by the Russians. We didn't keep track of him. Because of some kind of screw-up with the way his name was spelled, we didn't know that he flew back to Chechnya.

We need to spend much more time, less on the security theater, and more time on actually examining manifests. Who is visiting us from Saudi Arabia? Who is visiting us from Egypt? Who is coming from anywhere in the Middle East? And we need to do thorough background checks on all of those people, even if it delays their entry into our country, because that's where our biggest threat is.

We still need to have a threat assessment in our airports for domestic flights, but I think really that we need to try to target it. And I like the frequent flier program. It's made traveling a lot better in our country. And thousands and thousands of business men and women are not a threat. Get them out of the line, so your actual attention being paid to potential threats, you can spend more time.

But the frequent flier program is a good program and I think it has made it easier to look and try to do threat assessment.

BLITZER: You're talking about the pre-screen or the global entry, but that's done by the TSA. How would a private contractor, for example, do that kind of screening?

PAUL: You could have any of this.

We still have some airports that do have private screening. So I guess it's just a question of who does a better job. The reason I tend to distrust government is, they are not very good at doing a lot of things.

For example, we're talking about the White House being hacked into. We're talking about the head of our intelligence agencies getting his e-mail hacked by a teenager. We're talking about a government that lost 21 million records from the Office of Personnel.

This is a government that's not very good at keeping secrets. And so I don't know. I tend to think that the private marketplace is protecting themselves all of the time. I don't think they could do worse. Look, they tested the TSA recently. What was it? Over half the time, the bomb got through when they tested them.

I would also arm our pilots. Instead of a small percentage being armed, I would say 100 percent of our pilots ought to be armed. I think having the air marshals be involved is a good idea, and having more air marshals and maybe less of the thousands of people in the TSA that may not be as necessary or as good as an air marshal on board.

There are a lot of things we can do, but the bottom line is, I think we ought to be very careful about people coming in from other countries, particularly the Middle East.

BLITZER: Should the U.S. military keep 750 or so American soldiers in Sinai right now, the dangerous part of Sinai? We're showing some video of these Americans troops there. They are so- called peacekeeping observers. Would you keep them there?

PAUL: I'm trying to remember how long they have been there.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: They have been there since the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty was signed here in Washington in 1979.

PAUL: Yes, a long time ago.

So, probably that we ought to transition away, where there are more local people doing it. They have been able to have a pretty secure peace for a long time. And I thought that's when they had been stationed there from.

But I think the bigger question right now is, I think the foolhardy notion that we are going to put 50 people in a war in Syria and that somehow is a good idea, talk about an underwhelming show of force. Putting 50 people or sending 50 people to war, I think it is probably one of the dumbest things I have ever heard of. And I hope tragedy doesn't come from that. But that's the most underwhelming use of force I have ever heard of. I would say you either go in with overwhelming force or maybe you don't go in at all.

BLITZER: Final question on the U.S. economy. As you know, the job numbers came out today, 271,000 jobs created in October. The unemployment rate is now at only 5 percent. That's a seven-year low. In President Obama's first year in office, you remember, the unemployment rate was as high as 10 percent in October of 2009.

Does President Obama deserve credit for the economic turnaround?

PAUL: I think some of the unemployment numbers still underestimate those not working.

The other way we measure this is by labor participation rates. And there is still probably the highest number of people not working that we have ever had in our history. So what happens is, when people are no longer looking for work, when they are just permanently on assistance, all of a sudden, they are not counted anymore.

And I think the numbers are underestimated. I know, in Kentucky, we're still struggling. We have lost thousands of jobs in the coal industry. And the president's new regulations on clean power act I think threaten to bankrupt the rest of our coal industry in Kentucky, so, in Kentucky, we're still hurting very much from President Obama's policies.

BLITZER: Senator Paul, thanks very much for joining us.

PAUL: Thank you.

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