MSNBC "Interview With Senator Ron Wyden" - Transcript

Interview

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MS. MITCHELL: We begin this hour on Capitol Hill with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. Senator, you serve on the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, so you're right there with all the information that we need most today.

First of all, Nancy Pelosi's take on the CIA, I'm not sure whether you were on the committee back then, but this has raised serious questions about the credibility of the CIA -- what it said then, what it's saying now. What do you think?

SEN. WYDEN: Andrea, I can't speculate on what Nancy Pelosi was told at that time. What I can tell you is there is a 1947 law that says all the members of the Intelligence Committee must be kept currently and fully informed, and the Bush administration consistently didn't comply with that law. So when I finally was told late in 2006, I and Senator Feinstein and Senator Hagel wrote a classified letter making it very clear that objected to what was going on, and I hope we'll be able to get that classified letter declassified very quickly.

MS. MITCHELL: This is what the current ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond, had to say on "Morning Joe."

SEN. CHRISTOPHER BOND (R-MO): (From videotape.) To trash our intelligence community, as she's done, it only builds on the -- on the fear and the -- and the inward-looking that's come about since the release of the opinions.

I've been in briefings, and they don't have briefings to tell you the techniques they're not going to use.

MS. MITCHELL: Now, there is that question, because what Nancy Pelosi has said and her -- as The Washington Post has pointed out very clearly today, her answers have changed over the course of several weeks on this subject. But what she has said is that she was briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques, not told about waterboarding until February of 2003, but that in that 2002 briefing, after Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded 83 times, that she was told about prospective techniques and not specifically waterboarding.

This does raise the question of whether or not she was asking questions, whether she was taking in what they were telling her. And why would they be briefing her about something that they might do after the fact when, in fact, most of these briefings are about things that they are currently doing or planning to do?

SEN. WYDEN: Andrea, because I and most members of the committee were not fully and currently informed for years and years, nobody can really speculate about the kinds of questions you're talking about.

Now, I will tell you that the vice president has called for various documents to be made public. I will tell you I find it hard to believe why the vice president is so convinced that those documents support his position. But as far as I'm concerned, most of that information ought to be declassified so we can get beyond this he said, she said business.

MS. MITCHELL: Now, I have a chart here that the agency sent to Congress and then came out, and it is a chart of people who were briefed over the course of many years. And it has long lists of full members of the committee. You're suggesting to me that there still were not adequate briefings to the -- to the Hill.

SEN. WYDEN: Absolutely. The 1947 law, the law that I cited here, was consistently violated by the Bush administration. Members were kept in the dark for years and years on end. And when I learned, I wrote that classified letter. I hope that it'll be declassified quickly. The American people deserve to know what Senator Feinstein, Senator Hagel and I said in voicing our concerns about this program. And yes, that law was violated, and members of the Intelligence Committee on which I serve were kept in the dark.

MS. MITCHELL: Now, what members of the intelligence community say, what people are saying was being put forth by some of the more liberal members -- Democratic members of Congress is, right after 9/11, they were asking, why aren't these detainees being questioned more aggressively? Why aren't we getting more information? This was before the 9/11 commission. They wanted to find out -- get to the bottom of who was responsible. Is this a case where people are having different recollections after the fact?

SEN. WYDEN: Certainly there are substantial differences of opinion here. That's why the inquiry being done by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is so important. What's needed here is an infusion of good information, and let's get to the bottom of it.

And by the way, an additional important point in all this, in my view, given the events of the last few days, is to remember the Abu Ghraib case. When you think about the Abu Ghraib case, what was particularly troubling was these low-ranking officers were the ones that faced serious penalties. It was the high-ranking people who orchestrated it all who were getting off scot-free. I want to get at those questions in this investigation.

MS. MITCHELL: There's also a difference of recollection between former Intelligence Chairman Bob Graham, former senator. He was on with David Shuster an hour or so ago, and he said that he was only briefed once on these techniques, not four times as the agency told him. I've gone through the agency's list. They say that they only said they briefed him once, but there seems to be a recollection -- a difference of recollection there. And of course, we know that the former senator kept those detailed spiral notebooks.

What would you like the CIA to do now to clarify -- to satisfy your concerns that, as you claim, they're violating the law?

SEN. WYDEN: What I would hope now is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on a bipartisan basis, could go at its work and get to the bottom of this. There are obviously so many differing opinions now it's important to get the facts. Get the facts and let the consequences be determined by the kind of information that comes out of a bipartisan inquiry.

MS. MITCHELL: Let me ask you also about your role on the Judiciary Committee. Have you had the opportunity to speak to the president about the upcoming nomination on a new justice for the Supreme Court?

SEN. WYDEN: I have not spoken to the president personally about it, but I'm very comfortable with the way the president is handling the Supreme Court discussions. In particular, he's sending a message that he wants to break the mold here. He wants to have somebody who really is looking at a fresh approach. He wants somebody who's going to follow the law. But I'm very pleased with a number of candidates. Personally, I hope the nominee's a woman.

MS. MITCHELL: You hope the nominee is a woman?

SEN. WYDEN: Yes.

MS. MITCHELL: And what about those who say that there are plenty of, you know, very high-qualified people who are not women, and that we shouldn't get locked into these categories that, in fact, there needs to be more diversity on the court in terms of Hispanics and other minorities?

SEN. WYDEN: I'm certainly comfortable with making those judgments as part of the process of considering a nominee. And what the president is talking about is trying to have someone who's qualified. And my mother is the person I've always admired the most, and she's guided some of my values with respect to women.

MS. MITCHELL: Well, she certainly would be in agreement, then, with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said memorably to the USA Today -- to USA Today recently that it's "lonely" there and that her -- her approach to cases, and most recently in the oral argument on the strip-search of that 13-year-old girl, is different simply as a matter of gender, and that there need to be more women, that something that Sandra Day O'Connor has also said.

SEN. WYDEN: Let's decide this on the basis of qualifications. And you've gotten a sense where my sympathies are.

MS. MITCHELL: Thank you very much.

SEN. WYDEN: Thanks for having me.

MS. MITCHELL: Thanks for being with us.

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