Transcript for April 23

Let me show you some headlines, and this is The Washington Post: “CIA Officer is Fired for Media Leaks.” And there she is, Mary McCarthy, talking about this particular story. The original story in November of ‘05, “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons,” which was written by, and there she is in the orange blouse, Dana Priest, who won a Pulitzer Prize for that story.

We have—David Broder, how do we deal with this in terms of journalists winning Pulitzer Prizes for tough, aggressive reporting, but the sources, the leaks, being dismissed?

MR. DAVID BRODER (The Washington Post): Well, I think the view that my paper has is that it’s the government’s responsibility to keep the government secrets secret. And the internal discipline that they have applied is basically their business.

I have to say that using lie detectors on government employees is a pretty extreme measure. I remember when George Schultz was secretary of state, and somebody proposed that they use lie detectors on him, and he said, “I’m out of here if you want to do that.” But I have to say, as journalists, we have to let the government deal with its internal processes themselves.

MR. RUSSERT: Ron Brownstein, the conservative analyst Bill Bennett said that journalists are worthy of jail, that they damage national security with these reports.

MR. RON BROWNSTEIN (Los Angeles Times): And said they were basically traitorist in what they, in what they did. First of all, that’s a reflection of the political era we’re in and the intensity of the, of the polarization. I would say this is, this is not a simple issue for me. Obviously, as a, as a CIA officer, if you are leaking classified information, you have to be prepared to accept the consequences of that, if you believe it is important enough to do it in the first place and in the national interest. On the other hand, this administration doesn’t come to this with a—with clean hands, in effect. I mean, we have from Lewis Libby the acknowledgement of the president himself had authorized—it’s different because the president’s authorizing, but nonetheless, the president releases, authorized him to release classified information that they thought would benefit their case, and yet they’re very aggressively—on Iraq—very aggressively going after those who they think will hurt their case. And it does create, I think, sort of a, of a cognitive dissonance in the message they’re sending out.

MR. RUSSERT: Tony Blankley, you were press secretary for Newt Gingrich, now the editorial page editor for The Washington Times. Where do you come down on this?

MR. TONY BLANKLEY (The Washington Times): Well, I think certainly regarding the government side of it, putting the journalist side away for a moment, we’ve had a decreasing level of discipline in releasing classified information. Remember during—before the war, you had Washington Post, New York Times quoting allegedly and apparently senior Pentagon officials on war plans that were being released in the months leading up to that. We’ve had these CIA leaks that are now becoming revealed. I think there’s been a reduction in the standard of discipline in the government that needs to be restrengthened.

Now, certainly, I think prosecuting a CIA agent who particularly—they signed—they sign a contract to agree not to release, they’re in a special case and I think are more vulnerable to prosecution than true civilian government employees.

As far as, as far as the newspapers’ vulnerabilities, it was the Philip Agee case back in, what, the ‘80s, I guess, that created the legislation, made it illegal to publish as well as to release. I don’t know that that’s been used except against one newsletter many years ago.

MR. RUSSERT: Dee Dee Myers, who worked with President Clinton, now with Vanity Fair, what’s your take?

MS. DEE DEE MYERS: Well, I mean, I agree with Tony. I think there’s been a diminishing of standards over the years as we’ve moved toward a more transparent society more broadly. I mean, people think information is to shared in a way that I don’t think was always true. But classified secrets have been leaked always. We have the case now of Jack Anderson. The FBI wants to go back and purge his files because they believe there’s some information in there that ought not to be in there.

I think government employees, and particularly those with a security clearance, do sign, make a commitment that they’re not going to release that information. And if they choose to release it because they think that the releasing it serves a more important end than keeping that commitment, then that’s a decision they’re free to make if they’re willing to accept the consequences. And we’ll see as this case goes forward whether Mary McCarthy thought, you know, she would get caught, whether this factored in, whether she thought, “I don’t care whether I get caught. If I do, I think releasing this information”—if she, in fact, did it—“is more important than keeping my commitment.”

MR. BROWNSTEIN: That’s part of the question here. I mean, ultimately, you know, the responsibility the individual bears is one thing. Is the country better off knowing this or not? Do we feel that the country is better off, that the world is better off having this information out there? Certainly, the question on the NSA spying, that’s what—the NSA wiretap, that’s what Bill Bennett was getting at, arguing no. You know, probably many Americans feel, whether they agree with this program or not, that they are better off knowing it. So that ultimately there’s a choice being made here by an individual, but there’s also a kind of a social and broader political choice.

MR. BLANKLEY: But in any one given instance, you might be able to make a pretty good case the people ought to know a particular fact.

MR. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.

MR. BLANKLEY: But over time, the government loses its capacity to manage foreign and military and intelligence policy if everybody feels free to start releasing. So you can’t...

MR. BRODER: But it’s also the case, Tony, that ultimately, an administration’s credibility depends on its willingness to be straight with the public on the big issues. And this administration too often has failed that test.

MR. BLANKLEY: Yeah, but that’s different from classified information that’s being released. As far as an administration is not being honest, obviously, that’s going to induce whistle-blowing and leaking. But this we’re talking about national security, classified information that apparently in this case the CIA has actually done damage to our relations with Eastern European countries. It’s a fairly big deal.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the staff change at the White House. Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, is gone, replaced by Josh Bolten. Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff who is deeply involved in policy, now told, “Focus on politics.” What does that mean, David?

MR. BRODER: It means, I think, that the president is taking sensible steps to try to strengthen his hand. Josh Bolten is doing a good job, I think, of hitting the places where this administration needed some shoring up. In the case of Karl Rove, it’s hard to believe that he will not keep a hand in policy since there is such an intimate connection between politics and policy. But by having somebody else designated as a policy coordinator, it probably means that they’ll get more attention to that part of the process.

MR. RUSSERT: We had a situation in the New York Times where it said that Josh Bolten was concerned about Harriet Miers, the White House council, whether she was competent enough for that job. Harriet Miers, the same woman that President Bush nominated for the Supreme Court, Ron Brownstein. At the Friday morning staff meeting, Josh Bolten said, “No, no, no, that’s not true. Harriet Miers is safe and secure.”

MR. BROWNSTEIN: Well, there’s a—you know, there’s a lot of anxiety in the White House about how far this is going to go, but I—in some ways the question should be whether they’re looking at changes that are fundamental or not. You know, the president is in the weakest position he has been in throughout his presidency, and moving staff around when you’re almost entirely dealing with a, with a pool of people who have been there from the beginning, a lot of questions about whether that’s going to be enough.

You know, Karl Rove’s relationship with the president is the source of his power, not his title. So I don’t think that Karl Rove is going to be marginalized.

The bigger problem, Tim, I think in the policy process has been if you go back and look at any of this in the State of the Union, they had pretty much run aground. There’s a very minimalist agenda, and that was driven largely by the concern among the Republicans on Capitol Hill that they didn’t have the cohesion and the president didn’t have the strength with the country to push a more ambitious agenda at this point. Until that changes, whoever we put in this—these jobs, we’re not going to see big, bright, bold ideas I think out of the White House for the foreseeable future.

MR. RUSSERT: Dee Dee Myers, you stood at that White House podium. October of 2003 Scott McClellan said he had talked to Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. They were not involved in the Valerie Plame case.

MS. MYERS: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: He came back out in July of ‘05 and said, “Well, I’m not going to talk about it, and, and in terms of my credibility you know me. You know the kind of person I am.” Is it just a winless position?

MS. MYERS: It’s becoming increasingly winless. I mean, I think the relationship between the press corps and this White House and this White House press operation is so contentious and so fraught that it’s very hard to imagine how anybody can really succeed. You go out there every day and you feel a bit like canon fodder.

But—and I think Scott’s—that moment is illustrative. People did know him, they believed he was an honest guy and yet it didn’t matter. In that matter his credibility was, was rocked because people had told him something and he went out and repeated it in good faith, which is something you learn to do very, very rarely once you’re in that job because people, you find, are protecting their own prerogatives, particularly when there’s criminal investigations involved and you have to be very, very careful. But that said, I think it is an increasingly difficult job, and a 24/7 news environment and a contentious press/government official environment and the next person who comes along is going to, you know, learn that as well, I think.

MR. RUSSERT: When you were White House press secretary only the first five minutes of the press briefings...

MS. MYERS: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: ...with you were on television.

MS. MYERS: And that was a change from the previous administration where none of it was on.

MR. RUSSERT: And then your predecessor changed it to have the whole event.

If you were—successor.

MS. MYERS: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: If you were the White House press secretary in 2006, would you shut off the cameras?

MS. MYERS: Boy, it would be an interesting experiment. The, the, the reaction from the press corps would be tremendous, and you’d have to be willing to find other ways to feed their needs for—I mean, what we, what we’ve seen over the last several years or the last decade is an increasing number of, of cable television outlets, places where you can use that video which you couldn’t use 10 years ago. There was no place to put it so there wasn’t as pressure for me to be on TV throughout my briefing. Now for radio, for cable television, for the Internet there’s such a tremendous appetite for video footage. So I think it may be impossible to put that genie back in the bottle.

But it’s worth thinking about how to make that briefing more useful. It’s not very useful any more. Both sides are posturing. There’s not a lot of useful information that gets exchanged. The White House spokesman isn’t that forthcoming. The press is sometimes just, you know, shouting questions at him for reaction, to show that they’re being tough and they’re not lapdogs for this Republican administration. And so they’re—you know, it’s a very tall order, because the press resists it mightily and this administration isn’t that interested in having a better relationship so far. We’ll see if Bolten changes that.

MR. RUSSERT: Tony Blankley, in your former life you came in with Newt Gingrich, the Republican revolution. One of the first things you did is have the speakers briefing open to cameras. Mistake?

MR. BLANKLEY: No, I don’t think so, although Newt eventually thought it was a mistake. He canceled it I think in—after the—April. But the reason we did it was because it was an opportunity to frame the news for the day nationally early in the morning. Ten, 11 o’clock in the morning we were able to get out there and, and frame it. I think that it helped.

I think it helped us, by the way, pass the Contract With America back then because we were framing the issue, making the positive points. It became very contentious as, as the White House briefings recently have become. And how you manage the contention is a question, I think, of technical expertise to some extent. You take Scott’s example that you used where he said, “I talked to them and they didn’t do it.” He might have said, for instance, “I talked to them and they told me he—they didn’t do it,” and that would distance him a little bit from, from it. He’s then just a conduit for their statements, but by internalizing it and asserting it as his own assertion, he then becomes responsible for its truth or non-truth.

And I agree with, with Dee Dee. Obviously, as a press secretary you have to be almost as good a reporter as, as a reporter does to make sure you’re getting the facts.

MR. BRODER: All this goes, really, goes back to the president, and what the president wants.

MS. MYERS: Good point.

MR. BRODER: I mean the problem is not Scott, the problem is George W.

Bush...

MS. MYERS: Right.

MR. BRODER: ...who has no sense of any obligation to keep the press informed or to keep the public current on what is going on there. And as long as that’s his attitude, it’s going to be very difficult for anybody to succeed in that job.

MR. BROWNSTEIN: The question is whether it’s really going to be unique to Bush. Certainly, I agree with everything you’ve said, but I think at a more fundamental level, we are seeing a change in the relationship between the media and politicians, and increasingly I think political leaders, and I think this White House very clearly doesn’t necessarily believe that talk—that, that using the mainstream mass media is the most effective way to reach its voters. I mean, increasingly they seem target—more focused on targeted, niche kind of vehicles of communication that reach their conservative base, and, and talking to the, sort of the mass media through that White House press briefing, or through any other vehicle isn’t really the core of their communication strategy. And increasingly it’s reaching people directly on their side through things like the Internet, some of the more—talk radio, and some of the more overtly partisan news sources. And I, and I think that is a real shift that may outlast this president.

MR. RUSSERT: I remember when Bill Clinton would get off the plane sometimes, Dee Dee, and see the national press on one side, the local press on the other side. Right to the locals.

MS. MYERS: Right. Absolutely, that’s a lesson you learn very fast. You’re going to get a—sort of a clear, fairer shake from the locals who are just so excited that you’re there and talking to them.

(To Mr. Blankley) I’m sorry.

MR. BLANKLEY: But, but I agree with Mr. Broder. I—and, and I think it is a mistake of, of a White House press operation not to engage the press corps here. I think that it can be done effectively and honestly, and, and, and in a serious way. You’re going to get hit a lot, but to put up the shield and have no communication is going to induce future administrations to get into the same kind of—they exaggerate the mess they’re going to get into when they have no communication back and forth.

By the way, one of the good things that a White House gets from talking to the press is, is reconnaissance of how the press and to some extent the country is feeling. I think it’s—that two-way exchange is really vital to the process.

MR. RUSSERT: You—but you’ve been nominated, you’ve been nominated for this job.

MS. MYERS: Yeah.

MR. BLANKLEY: Thanks.

MR. RUSSERT: Would, would you accept it, Tony?

MR. BLANKLEY: I thought you were my friend.

MR. RUSSERT: Would you accept it?

MR. BLANKLEY: No, no thank you.

MR. RUSSERT: All right.

MS. MYERS: He’s a conservative.

MR. BROWNSTEIN: (Unintelligible)...anyway.

MR. BRODER: The problem with the niche strategy is that you’re trying to govern a country.

MR. BROWNSTEIN: Right.

MR. BRODER: And the niche strategy gets you to 52 percent on a good day, and on a bad day it gets you where they are today.

MS. MYERS: Right.

MR. BROWNSTEIN: And that’s what, and that’s what we’ve seen. I mean, at the high point of, of reelection, you—you’re basically speaking to half the country, when things are going well. You have very little cushion, very little margin of error for this president when things started to go badly in ‘05. And as David says, now he’s down in the mid-, in the mid-30s and wondering how he does reach an electorate beyond his base.

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