MSNBC Meet The Press-Transcript

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MR. RUSSERT: And we're back.

Senator Durbin and Senator Specter, welcome both. Let me share with you the latest e-mail that has been obtained, released by the Department of Justice. Here's the headlines in the newspapers about it. It says in The New York Times headline: "Gonzales Met With Advisers on Dismissals. Record Seems at Odds With Past Comments."

And here is the e-mail. It's from Kyle Simpson, the attorney general's chief of staff. It talks about a meeting for next Monday, meeting November 27th, 2006, the attorney general, "me, Monica," deputy attorney general, others, one hour in the attorney general's conference room. Thanks.

A meeting on this very subject. And yet, 12 days ago, the attorney general of the United States met with the press and spoke to the nation and said this:

(Videotape, March 13, 2007)

ATTY. GEN. ALBERTO GONZALES: That is, in essence, what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew, as the attorney general.

I never saw documents, we never had a discussion about where things stood.

(End of videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Durbin, reading that memo and hearing those comments, what do you conclude?

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Tim, there's a standing rule in Washington that if you have bad news, you want to release it as late as you can on Friday, hoping people will miss it. And that's when this information was released. Frankly, it is the third contradiction now that comes from the attorney general. First he said the White House was not involved. We've seen from the e-mails that they were. Second, he said these men were dismissed—I should say these U.S. attorneys were dismissed because of performance. Now we find out there were political considerations, starting with Karl Rove and others. And now the attorney general's statement of just a few days ago has been contradicted by the fact he was involved in a meeting where this was discussed, and it wasn't the only meeting he's been involved in. It really raises a question about credibility, and I think that's why we need to have the most important players before the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, with a transcript, telling the whole truth.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Specter, when you hear the attorney general say that he was not involved in any discussions about what was going on, and he never had a discussion about thing—where things stood, and you read that e-mail of an hour meeting in his conference room on this very subject, what do you conclude?

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R-PA): Well, I think that there's a second, very critical element in this matter, and that is whether the attorney general has been candid. And this, on top of the underlying question as to whether the Department of Justice acted properly or improperly in asking for the resignations, makes it very important that the Judiciary Committee get to the bottom of it. I'm doing more—I'm more interested, Tim, than connecting the dots, I want to find out what the facts are. And we're going to have Kyle Sampson in next Thursday. We're going to have the attorney general in the Tuesday after we come back from recess, and I think Attorney General Gonzales' testimony will be a make or break situation for him. There are a lot of questions to be answered beyond credibility. There's no doubt that what has happened has had a very chilling effect on the United States attorneys across the country.

Listen, they serve at the pleasure of the president, and President Clinton discharged, in one fell swoop, all 93. So that the president can discharge without a reason, but I think they cannot be discharged for a bad reason. There are conflicting stories as to what happened with these eight U.S. attorneys, and I think the Judiciary Committee has to have a very intense investigation to find out what the facts were.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that the attorney general has been candid, Senator Specter?

SEN. SPECTER: Well, on the appearance, he's got questions to answer. I'm not going to make a judgment based upon newspaper stories. I talked to the attorney general yesterday, and I told him that he would have an opportunity, as far as I was concerned, to present his case, but that he was going to have to have an explanation as to why he said he wasn't involved in discussions—that's the key word—and now you have these e-mails which appear to contradict that. Look, we have to have an attorney general who is candid, truthful. And if we find he has not been candid and truthful, that's a, a very compelling reason for him not to stay on.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Durbin, in the USA Today on March 7th, the attorney general wrote this: "To be clear, it was for reasons related to policy, priorities and management—what have been referred to broadly as ‘performance-related' reasons. ...

"While I am grateful for the public service of those U.S. attorneys, they simply lost my confidence. I hope that this episode ultimately will be recognized for what it is: an overblown personnel matter."

If the attorney general is saying that these attorney—U.S. attorneys lost his confidence because of their performance-related reasons, then he obviously reviewed the cases, reviewed their situations, reviewed their work records and came out with this reason for their dismissal. That means he was intimately involved.

SEN. DURBIN: Tim, there were so many contradictions in what the attorney general's already told us. And your viewers have just got to meet two of these dismissed U.S. attorneys on a more personal basis. John McKay and Mr. Iglesias come off as very good, professional prosecutors, and it's very clear what has happened here. They fell out of favor politically. The e-mails now tell us that story. As Senator Specter said, each new president gets to put in a new team of U.S. attorneys. But, as Mr. Iglesias noted, over the last 25 years, only two out of the 486 U.S. attorneys had been removed for something other than cause, something other than criminal misconduct. And here, in one fell swoop, there were eight U.S. attorneys that were dismissed. We know there was politics behind it.

The reason why it's so significant is that a U.S. attorney, in many respects, has more power than many people in the federal government. And we have to make certain that, that U.S. attorneys' credibility is protected.

One thing I'll tell you is that I left a restaurant in Chicago the other night, stopped by a fellow at the door who said, gave me his name and he says, "I'm an assistant U.S. attorney here in the northern district of Illinois. Please get to the bottom of this. I've given my life to this. This shadow, this cloud over the U.S. attorneys' offices across America has got to be lifted." And that's why these hearings are so important.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe, Senator Durbin, that the current attorney general has the independence and integrity to continue in that office?

SEN. DURBIN: I don't believe he enjoys the confidence of the American people or of Congress. You'll find more and more Republican members expressing doubt about whether or not he can continue, and, as you notice, the president more frequently is now saying that he's standing behind him. It's an indication of the problems that he's facing. It would be so refreshing to bring a real prosecutor in there, someone independent to clean up the Department of Justice to restore the integrity and credibility, what that important agency needs.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Specter, again, another USA Today article. This one is a fixed, a fired—"3 fired prosecutors were in top 10 for convictions, federal data show."

"Three of the eight federal prosecutors ousted by the Justice Department as poor performers ranked in the top 10 for prosecutions and convictions by the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys, an analysis of court records" show. Paul Charlton in Arizona; David Iglesias, who was just on, was number four; Carol Lam in California was number seven. What does this tell you?

SEN. SPECTER: Well, it tells me that the attorney general has a lot of explaining to do. The factors that you have cited are important, but there are other factors. I was district attorney of Philadelphia for eight years and have some substantial familiarity with a prosecutor's role. There, there are—there are lots of facets involved. But I'm not going to convict anybody from what appears in the newspapers or on television. And, as I say, the attorney general is going to—due before the Judiciary Committee. I've asked him tough questions in the past, and I will again. And if he can't respond to establish that he had a reason for what was done, I will be the first to say so.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe, as of now, he has the independence, the integrity and the candor to continue in his position?

SEN. SPECTER: Well, the integrity? Let's hear what he has to say. We've read about it in the newspapers, we've heard about it on TV. Let's go eyeball to eyeball with the man and see what his integrity is. As to his independence, there's a real question that he has allied himself a little too closely with the president when the attorney general has broader responsibilities than most other Cabinet officers.

But I want to ask him those questions. The decision on asking for resignations really ought to be the attorney general, not the president. The appointment of new people, that's the president's constitutional authority. So I want to hear from him directly what he did vis-a-vis the White House, what kind of independence he showed, if any.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Durbin, as you know, the judiciary committee has voted to issue subpoenas for White House officials to testify before your committee, including Karl Rove. There's a whole issue of executive privilege, whether or not those officials should have to come before Congress under oath. And I want to talk about some comments you made to the Chicago Sun-Times, and here they are. "If and when Rove is sworn in as a witness, Durbin said it would be, ‘reasonable,' to ‘go beyond the eight who were dismissed' and ask about his relationship with those who were retained, whether any political pressure was put on U.S. attorneys who did not lose their jobs. Added, Durbin, ‘What else was Karl Rove doing when it came to other activities, departments of the government?'"

Do you believe that if Mr. Rove comes before your committee, you can ask him about his involvement in any department in government? Is it—isn't that a fishing expedition?

SEN. DURBIN: Well, I don't want to go too far, and I think you're right. We should restrict our, our inquiry in the judiciary committee to this question of the Department of Justice. But sadly, what has happened here has raised a question about those others who are serving as U.S. attorneys today who were not dismissed. If they dropped eight people from the team because they didn't play ball, how many others did play ball? We have to ask those questions now. I'm sorry that we do. But on—reasonable inquiry would take us to that point of asking Mr. Rove, as well as the attorney general, "Well, how many other U.S. attorneys were contacted, either by members of Congress or by higher-ups in the administration and urged to prosecute matters that had a political side to them before an election." It's a—it's a question which has to be asked at this point to clear the air. I have confidence that the overwhelming majority of U.S. attorneys are professional people, doing a good job and not political. But we really have to ask Rove and others these important questions.

MR. RUSSERT: The president is concerned about a "show trial," Senator Durbin. If Mr. Rove agreed to come before your committee in a closed session, but did testify, not under oath, but misleading Congress in itself is punishable, would you accept that?

SEN. DURBIN: Now, that's a point that's been made by Senator Specter, and I respect that point, but, you know, look at the premise here. The White House says, "We have nothing to hide, but we'll only testify behind closed doors. We want to get to the truth, but we won't speak under oath. We want the American people to know what actually happened, but we don't want a transcript." These things are inconsistent. It's time to follow the orderly process, the traditional process, and Chairman Leahy suggested it. Bring these witnesses before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They'll be protected by both sides to make sure that the questions are reasonable, but they really ought to speak to the American people under oath and tell the whole story.

MR. RUSSERT: How about a closed session with a transcript which you then can compare and contrast with other comments?

SEN. DURBIN: Well, of course, if we had a closed session with a transcript, and it was unsatisfactory, then we could consider going forward. But why do we need the interim step? Why don't we at least open this with a public hearing so that we can get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Specter, is there an accommodation that can be reached between your committee and the White House?

SEN. SPECTER: I think so, and I'm working to accomplish this to—just that. If there's a confrontation here on executive privilege for the president and oversight by the Congress, it's going to take a long time to decide. The last matter took more than two years, so we'd be in the term of another president before the courts had ruled. This matter is so important to the day in and day out functioning of the Department of Justice that the air has to be cleared.

I talked to Fred Fielding late last week and made a number of suggestions. I think the president is wrong when he refuses to have a transcript. If you don't have a transcript, senators are going to walk out and, in good faith, have different versions as to—as to what occurred. When you talk about oath, that'd be fine, but the individuals who make false official statements are subjected to the same penalty, five years as for perjury. You had the number two man in the Interior pleading guilty to that charge. When it comes to the issue of having the individuals appear before both bodies, I think we can streamline that, have one proceeding with a, a reasonable number of members from the House and Senate.

I would vastly prefer to have the situation public because there is a great public concern here. But it's time we worked to end stalemate. It's time we worked to find out what happened here, what the facts are. And if we're dissatisfied with an accommodation, we can always issue subpoenas and fight it out in court, but that's not in the interest of the American people to find the facts and let us move on to eliminate this chilling effect which now affects and infects the judicial system.

MR. RUSSERT: So you're confident that Karl Rove and other White House officials will testify under some format?

SEN. SPECTER: Well, I think it can be worked out. I've said from the start that these White House officials ought to testify. The Washington Post has 73 examples that they cite in today's paper, and Condoleezza Rice, when she was national security counselor, appeared and testified under oath before the 9/11 Commission. And I think, if we work at it, we can find an accommodation in the public interest. The bickering's gone on long enough in too many quarters in Washington, and I'm, I'm going to work very hard with both Senator Leahy, who's the chairman, and with White House counsel Fred Fielding to try to find that accommodation.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Arlen Specter, Senator Dick Durbin, we thank you for joining us and sharing your views.

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