MS. ANDREA MITCHELL: Our issues this Sunday: Partisan battles on Capitol Hill, Iraq, immigration, flag-burning, and a Supreme Court ruling against the president’s claim of wartime powers, all setting the stage for the November midterm elections. With us: the assistant Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky; and the chairman of the Democratic senatorial campaign committee, Chuck Schumer of New York. McConnell and Schumer square off.

Then, the president leads an attack on the media.

(Videotape):

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: There can be no excuse for anyone entrusted with vital intelligence to leak it, and no excuse for any newspaper to print it.

(End videotape)

MS. MITCHELL: Leaks, freedom of the press and national security. Insights and analysis from Bill Bennett, radio host and author of “America: The Last Best Hope,” John Harwood of The Wall Street Journal and CNBC, Dana Priest of The Washington Post, and William Safire of The New York Times.

And in our MEET THE PRESS MINUTE, 35 years ago this week the Supreme Court issued an injunction allowing The New York Times to continue publication of the classified Pentagon Papers. The man who leaked the Papers to The New York Times, Daniel Ellsberg, was a guest on MEET THE PRESS May 20, 1973.

(Videotape, May 20, 1973):

DR. DANIEL ELLSBERG: I’ve not met a lawyer in this country who could say clearly that the acts that I admitted doing—copying the Pentagon Papers, of which I had authorized possession, and giving those copies to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ultimately to the press—violated any law.

(End videotape)

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MS. MITCHELL: But first, Senators McConnell and Senator Schumer. Welcome, both.

In a major rebuke this week to the White House, the Supreme Court ruled that the White House has to abide by the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice when handling detainees, and ruled that the military tribunals cannot be the course. Senator McConnell, in addition to this, The New York Times editors wrote in reaction, “The Supreme Court’s decision striking down the military tribunals set up to try the detainees being held in Guantanamo Bay is far more than a narrow ruling on the issue of military courts. It is an important and welcome reaffirmation that even in times of war, the law is what the Constitution, the statute books and the Geneva Conventions say it is - not what the president wants it to be.” Senator, in a broader sense, isn’t this a real rebuke and a repudiation of the broad authorities that the president’s been claiming since 9/11?

SEN. MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): Well, first and most importantly, the decision did not require the president to release the prisoners at Guantanamo, nor did it require the president to close Guantanamo.

MS. MITCHELL: Correct.

SEN. McCONNELL: It said that in order to try these individuals by—an appropriate thing to do would be for the president to get the Congress to create military commissions, or there were two other options, both of which I think are clearly unacceptable. So what I think Congress will be doing is creating military commissions.

And second, a very disturbing aspect of the decision was that the Court held Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applicable to American servicemen. And this means that American servicemen potentially could be accused of war crimes. I think Congress is going to want to deal with that as well when it enacts these military commissions, and I think we need to do it soon. And so we’ll be dealing with that in the coming weeks.

MS. MITCHELL: You—do you have time? You won’t—you’re going off now—you’re off now on July...

SEN. McCONNELL: There’s nothing more important than the war on terror, and I think we will have to act on this very soon, either in July or in September, certainly in the next couple of months.

MS. MITCHELL: Senator Schumer, will this be a bipartisan effort? And can you agree on the fix?

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): I think it will. Look, let’s face it, Andrea, the world is a different place, and in this war on terrorism you don’t have set battlefields, you don’t have the enemy wearing uniforms. So to change things, that is a good idea. The problem is, this White House has felt it could just change things unilaterally against the Constitution, against the systems of checks and balances. Had they come to Congress a few years on this—a few years ago on this issue, my guess is they would have gotten most of what they wanted. But what’s happened here, because there is such a view that the president’s power is infinite and unchecked by anybody—first time ever a president has had those kinds of views—they keep running into brick walls—in this case, a Supreme Court that has generally been sympathetic to executive power. And so we’re going to have to not only look at this issue, we’re going to have to go back to the other issues as well, because this ruling undercuts some of the other things the president has done. But on giving the president what he needs, and giving our country what we need to fight the war on terror, there’s going to be agreement.

MS. MITCHELL: Well, let’s break it down here, because this ruling does indicate to some human rights groups that this applies to the prisoners in secret CIA prisons, to the prisoners in Afghanistan—beyond Guantanamo. Are we going to see a flood of habeas corpus petitions now, Senator McConnell?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, I think clearly we’ve got to act, and I’m pleased to hear that Chuck thinks that we may be able to do this on a bipartisan basis. I think it is important to note that this president hasn’t done anything with regard to enemy combatants that have been done—that hadn’t been done by previous presidents. The Court now has stepped into a—into the field and said we must create these commissions. Well, we’re happy to do that, and I’m hopeful it’ll be done on a bipartisan basis. But I don’t think we’re going to pass something that’s going to have our military servicemen subject to some kind of international rules.

SEN. SCHUMER: Of course not.

MS. MITCHELL: But we are signatories to the Geneva Conventions. Why shouldn’t our servicemen be...

SEN. McCONNELL: But the, but the, but the enemy is not a signatory to the, to the, to the Geneva Conventions, so why should these terrorists be subjected to something they’re not signatories to?

SEN. SCHUMER: The good news, Andrea, is that the Court, particularly Breyer’s decision, said Congress could change the rules. And we have to change the rules. I don’t think there’s disagreement on that.

SEN. McCONNELL: And we, and we will.

SEN. SCHUMER: Security and liberty have a tenuous and careful balance in this republic. It changes from time to time, and should. But the problem here, again, you’re right. They’re going to be hundreds of court petitions. This is going to create huge discombobulation. We’re going to be far worse off than if the administration had come to Congress originally and gotten this done. But this view—and I don’t agree with Mitch here—this view that the president has the sole right based on a—the use of military force doctrine, when none of this was even discussed or mentioned, is the wrong view, and the Supreme Court said it.

SEN. McCONNELL: Andrea, could I just...

MS. MITCHELL: Senator McConnell, should Guantanamo now just be closed?

SEN. McCONNELL: No. I, I...

MS. MITCHELL: Because it’s just been such a black eye diplomatically.

SEN. McCONNELL: What, what are we, what are we going to do with these people? I mean, we want them to free them so they can come kill us again? Look, I, I think the Congress is very, very likely to give the president exactly what he thinks he needs to continue to fight the war on terror. And it’s important for all of us to remember that we haven’t been attacked again here at home again since 9/11. That’s not an accident. That’s not an accident. The policies that we’ve pursued are protecting us here at home.

MS. MITCHELL: But is this Court ruling a strong signal to the White House that it should now agree with Senator McCain, Senator Lindsey Graham and, and others in your party who believe that it should go in—go along with the Geneva Convention in terms of rules of the road for our soldiers?

SEN. McCONNELL: I think Congress is going to be very reluctant to subject American military people to potential war crimes violations.

MS. MITCHELL: So John McCain is wrong on this?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, we’ll see. We’re going to have—we’re looking for the administration’s advice about what they need to fight the war on terror. My guess is that the Congress is very likely to give the president what he thinks he needs, the tools he thinks he needs to protect us here at home.

SEN. SCHUMER: I don’t think it’s quite that simple. I think that there will be a careful looking again at what certain due process elements are that the Constitution and the Supreme Court has required in the past. But giving the president the tool he needs, yes.

But there’s one other thing that ought to be done, Andrea, given the sweeping nature of this decision, not so much on the specifics of what can be done, but on how it ought to be done. I think—I’ve, I’ve sent a letter today to Attorney General Gonzales asking that they do a review now in light of this decision of all their other arrogations of power so we avoid this mess again two years later on these other issues, whether it’s wire taps or anything else, where the administration just said unilaterally, “We can do whatever we want.” That is not how the United States works.

CONTINUED

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