CBS Face The Nation-Transcript

CBS Face The Nation-Transcript

SCHIEFFER: Good morning again. Joining us now from our studio in New York,
Senator Chuck Schumer.

Senator CHARLES SCHUMER (Democrat, New York; Vice Chair, Democratic Conference
Judiciary Committee): Good morning.

SCHIEFFER: With us from Philadelphia, Senator Arlen Specter.
Gentlemen, I want to get right to it. We're going to talk about the Justice
Department, but before we do, I want to ask you about this latest news that
the president has decided to ask for more troops to go to Iraq, 8,200 troops
for Iraq and Afghanistan, 4700 of them going to Iraq. That would be on top of
the 21,500 he has recently asked for.
Senator Schumer, how will Democrats greet this news? Will they try to block
the president from doing this?

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, I'm sure, Bob, that--you--what we have to do, Bob, is
divide it. I think most Democrats will support more troops in Afghanistan.
After all, that's where the nexus of terrorism is; Bin Laden is still there.
The new reports show that they are--al-Qaeda's setting up camps that might
have the capability of hurting America. But, as for Iraq, whether it's 4,000
more troops or 40,000 more troops, we Democrats believe almost unanimously
that we need a dramatic change in course, change in strategy away from
policing a civil war and much more in the direction of a much more limited and
narrow mission, which is preventing terrorism, such as we're trying to prevent
in Afghanistan. So when the supplemental spending resolution comes before us
next week, we are going to be focusing on the entire mission in Iraq and try
to get it changed.
SCHIEFFER: Well, but this is--this is above that. This is something in
addition to what's in the supplemental budget. Will you just sort of consider
that altogether? I guess what I'm driving at...

Sen. SCHUMER: I believe so.

SCHIEFFER: ...are you--are you going to try to force the president to cut
back on this, and--and can you?

Sen. SCHUMER: My--my--he just announced it this morning, but it makes a
great deal of sense to consider it altogether, because there is a demand for
100 billion new dollars for Iraq and Afghanistan, and this adds another few
billion. But it will be considered altogether, and on Iraq, our main focus
will be on changing that mission and setting a deadline where that mission is
changed a year from now, which will--it's a--it's a mission that will require
many, many fewer troops.

SCHIEFFER: But bottom line is you're not going to favor sending more troops,
you're going to try to stop this?

Sen. SCHUMER: No. We--well, what we're going to do is try to stop what's
going on in Iraq, whether there are more troops or not, in terms of changing
the mission. That's what our focus is going to be.

SCHIEFFER: All right.
Senator Specter, what's your thought on this?

Senator ARLEN SPECTER (Republican, Pennsylvania; Judiciary Committee): Bob,
before making a decision, I want to know more about what has happened from the
additional troops the president is already committing? He said he would send
21,500 more. Some of those have gone. There have been reports that things
are improving. Perhaps not a whole lot, but to some extent. I would want to
know what's happening with the international conference, where the United
States is now sitting down at the same table with Iran and with Syria. I
would want to see what kind of progress is being made, and I'd like to have
hearings and get into those details. As yet, the Democrats in the House, who
have taken the lead on curtailing funding, have not come up with a plan. You
have Congressman Murtha's proposal, which is excessive micromanagement, can't
be done. In the Senate, we have not yet had our debate on--on Iraq. So I
think it's premature to say what we're going to do with this request for
additional funding until we dig deeply into the facts and until we can come to
some consensus ourselves in the Congress as to what ought to be done.

SCHIEFFER: Were you surprised by this? Was there any news of this? Were you
given any indication the president would come back and ask for even more
troops than he's already asked for, Senator Specter?

Sen. SPECTER: Bob, I was not surprised. I think it's been clear that we
need them in Afghanistan, and there's general agreement, no one is objecting
to our action there. And I think that there had been an expectation that
there would need to be troops to back up his original announcement of the
21,500. So this is in the ordinary course of business. I think we got to get
away from the generalities. We had one hearing in the Appropriations
Committee where I sit with Condoleezza Rice and Secretary Gates coming in, and
that just really scratches the surface. I--I want to know what has happened
since mid-January, in the last five, six weeks, with the new troops going
over, and whether this international conference may--may pose some
breakthrough if the president has a plan to succeed.

SCHIEFFER: All right, well, let's--let's...

Sen. SCHUMER: But, Bob, my view here...

SCHIEFFER: Yeah?

Sen. SCHUMER: My view here is--is very simple, and that is that, even if you
didn't add any more troops, the mission has to change, period.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, let's shift to the situation going on in the
Justice Department, where we've had these stories about US attorneys being
fired by the attorney general, some of them because, apparently, some
Republicans felt they weren't bringing enough--doing enough to file corruption
charges against Democrats in their states.
Senator Specter, that has happened. And then, on top of it, we got a report
last week that the FBI has been abusing its power under the new Patriot Act,
and has been snooping on--on people in ways that they--they shouldn't be doing
it, invading privacy. Do you think that the attorney general, that it's time
for him to step aside here, new leadership should come there?

Sen. SPECTER: I think that's a question for the president and the attorney
general, but I do think there have been lots of problems. But before we come
to conclusions, I think we need to know--we need to know more facts. I--I'm
concerned about what happened in New Mexico. I'm concerned about what...

SCHIEFFER: That's where you had this US attorney fired because some there
said that he--he should've been more diligent in filing corruption charges
against some Democrats. Go ahead.

Sen. SPECTER: Well, that's right, and there were some telephone calls made.
But we have analogous charges by the US attorney in Baltimore. And now we
find, on further exploration, that there were really good reasons for
terminating the US attorney in Baltimore. He had claimed that he was subject
to political pressure, very much like the statements made by the US attorney
in--in New Mexico. So I--I want to get at the facts. We had him testify,
and, when he got these telephone calls, he did not report them to the Justice
Department, although that was required by the regulations, and a prompt
complaint is very important on credibility. And he explained it by saying,
`Well, the senator and the representative had been his mentor, so he didn't
want to shed a bad light on him,' but he later changed his mind when he
thought they were responsible for his firing.
I--I--I want to go over his reports. I--I want to know more detail as to--as
to how he functioned.

SCHIEFFER: Well, it seems to me, senator--it seems to me we already know a
lot of details.
Senator Schumer, what do you think ought to be done about this situation?

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, Bob, you know, the Justice Department is different than
any other department. In every other department, the Cabinet--chief Cabinet
officer is supposed to follow the president's orders, requests without
exception. But the Justice Department has a higher responsibility, rule of
law and the Constitution. And Attorney General Gonzalez, in his department,
has been even more political than his predecessor, Attorney General Ashcroft.
Attorney General Gonzalez is a nice man, but he either doesn't accept or
doesn't understand that he is no longer just the president's lawyer, but has a
higher obligation to the rule of law and the Constitution even when the
president should not want it to be so. And so this department has been so
political that I think, for the sake of the nation, Attorney General Gonzalez
should step down.

SCHIEFFER: Attorney General Gonzalez should step down. Let me ask you about
this, Senator Schumer, we now have this report from the FBI's--or the Justice
Department's own auditors that the FBI has been abusing its new powers that it
got under the--under the Patriot Act. I'm not sure what it is that the--that
the FBI has done here. Is this a serious charge? Explain to me why
we--basically, why we should care about this.

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, it is a serious charge, not only in--the inspector
general thinks it is, but the director of the FBI, Bob Mueller, has said it's
a very serious charge, and he's very upset about it. He said that privately
in a call to me and then said it publicly. The national security letters are
letters which allow you to look at the phone records or e-mail records of
somebody who might be suspected of terrorism. And in the Patriot Act, the
Justice Department came to us and said, `Look, we're going to need these in
certain instances. Let's have the--because if we need to fight terrorism,
let's have fewer checks.' Congress went along. And now what the IG has found
is that there are virtually--they even ignored those few checks that they
agreed to put in place.
For instance, they're supposed to report to Congress on the number of them.
They didn't, and there are 20,000, far more than anyone imagined. They were
supposed to, in certain cases, get warrants after they issued these letters.
They didn't. So there are so many abuses here that Senator Leahy has said the
Judiciary Committee will hold hearings, but, at the very minimum, the checks
on these national security letters has to be greatly increased. This is
serious stuff.

SCHIEFFER: Well, should this power that the FBI was given under the Patriot
Act, Senator Specter, do you think that Congress might need to roll that back,
that perhaps it should be curtailed in some way?

Sen. SPECTER: Bob, that's what I said on Friday immediately after the
disclosures. There are 47,000 of them involved, and we expanded the power to
go beyond foreign agents to national security generally, and it has been very
badly abused. And the only reason it was checked was because, when we
reauthorized the Patriot Act last year, we inserted the provision for the
inspector generals to report it. And that has disclosed these problems. And
I think that the hearings ought to go beyond an analysis of the failures to
comply with the law, but very active consideration about withdrawing some of
those powers.

SCHIEFFER: Do you agree with that, Senator Schumer?

Sen. SCHUMER: I do agree with that, Bob. What we found in--in the Justice
Department over and over again is a lack of respect for the rule of law, a
lack of respect for balance of powers. There's a view that the executives
should be almost without check. And that is so wrong, and that's one of the
reasons I think we need at change at the top in the Justice Department.

SCHIEFFER: Right. Let me ask both of you quickly, the Libby trial. A lot of
talk, both pro and con, that the president should pardon Mr. Libby; others
saying he should not pardon him.
What do you think, Senator Schumer?

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, I do not think he should pardon him by all means. I
think "Scooter" Libby was the fall guy, that is true. But a fall guy is not
allowed to break the law, and the jury found that he did break the law. I
have a great deal of respect for the special prosecutor, Fitzgerald. He's
known as a prosecutor's prosecutor. The president himself has said so. And
if he finds that Libby has broken the law seriously, he does not deserve to be
pardoned. That doesn't mean we shouldn't look at the rest of this. There has
been an abuse of the use of intelligence both before and after the Iraq war.
That didn't meet a criminal standard, but it certainly means that the White
House should look at what happened and try to change it. And we haven't heard
a peep out of the president about this, and it's serious stuff. It's serious
stuff even for others like Karl Rove, who leaked the name but didn't reach
that criminal standard in the eyes of Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald.

SCHIEFFER: Quickly, Senator Specter--I'll give--give you a chance to respond
to the same thing.

Sen. SPECTER: Well, I think it is premature to talk about a pardon because
there are some appeals up. I think the conviction may very well be reversed.
What you have here is a situation where the special prosecutor was authorized
to investigate the leak, and early on it was determined that the leaker was
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. And, as The Washington Post
pointed out, that should have--that should have ended the investigation. The
prosecution went further on a cloud over the vice president. You really have
thunderstorms today around the White House. But it was discredited a long
time ago that there was no effort by Saddam and Iraq to get nuclear material
out of Africa, so that, when the investigation went further, you've had the
jailing of a reporter for 85 days...

SCHIEFFER: All right.

Sen. SPECTER: Let me just make one comment about...

SCHIEFFER: Quickly, senator, quickly because we're out of time.

Sen. SPECTER: Quickly, pending legislation. Senator Luger and I have
introduced a bill to give a reporter a privilege, and I think...

SCHIEFFER: Well...

Sen. SPECTER: ...we have to...

SCHIEFFER: Senator, I'm terribly sorry, and I know you feel strongly about
that. We're just simply out of time.

Sen. SPECTER: OK, thank you.

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