MTP Transcript for Mar. 11, 2007

MS. PRIEST: Secretary—and, and other people. The commander of Walter Reed was, was relieved of command. Other—I think there will be other people relieved as well. So it’s not ending anytime soon. And, fundamentally, though, I think it will change the situation. Already there were troops in their—in their new barracks—they’ve been moved out of this terrible barracks, Building 18, put in a newly renovated one—calling to say that they were getting knocks on the door at 1 in the morning because they wanted to install the cable TV that night. So some things are improving, and I think that they will tackle the bigger problem of bureaucracy. Whether they’ll reach into the VA hospital system and really make improvements, there is a really tough one that requires a lot of commitment.

MR. RUSSERT: And, Michael Duffy, there has been a Washington response to this. This is a note from The Washington Post on Thursday. “Consider what the White House and the Pentagon have done after learning of substandard care for injured veterans at Walter Reed: They’ve created no fewer than eight overlapping investigations, commissions, task forces and study groups to respond.” It’s going—it’s going to take more than that.

MR. DUFFY: It is. And normally commissions’ proposals take years after they complete working them up to actually get them, you know, enacted. That’s true of the 9/11 commission; it’s been true of the Iraq Study Group. I—the other thing on the table with Walter Reed and, and the medical care for the veterans is a larger question of whether the Army is just broken at its core across the board.

You mentioned the comment the other day, I mean, from the person who said this is all about the Army and none of the other military arms. You, you have a situation where the Army is stressed at all levels—about equipment, about men, recruiting retention, and, and now medical care and family support. So there’s a—and I think General Schoomaker said just before he left in the fall that we are getting to the point where the Army is breaking. That’s not the exact quote, but it’s close. And, and, and so the question will become very soon of how long the Army can actually take this level of—this tempo without changing its—either going under or changing its, its—the whole way we fund it, how big it is, and how it’s led.

MR. RUSSERT: Ted Koppel, no matter how people feel about the war, there was a real outrage about this condition at Walter Reed...

MR. KOPPEL: No question.

MR. RUSSERT: ...that, that we believe that our country has a compact with these young men and women, that if they go and fight and they get injured, they get taken care of when they come home.

MR. KOPPEL: But it’s a phony compact. I mean, the fact of the matter is, it’s never been true. They always get terrific medical care on the battlefield. They always get terrific medical care when they go—when they’re flown out to Germany and, then, initially, when they come back here. And then they tend to be forgotten. That was true of the men who served in Korea, that was true of those who served in Vietnam, and it’s true again now. In that respect, I don’t think it’s a new story at all.

But let me go back for a moment to what you were quoting from Tom Friedman. The fact of the matter is this administration has made two points which are totally inconsistent with one another. On the one hand, they say the war we’re engaged in is an existential war, that if we don’t fight it with everything at our—that we have in our capacity, it’s going to result, potentially, in a drastic change to who we are and what we are and how this nation functions. On the other hand, the only people who are bearing the burden of this war are the military, their families and their friends. You and I, who don’t need it, have gotten tax breaks over the last few years. Why aren’t we paying more money rather than less money to support the military? You know, as Michael said, it’s—you know, the, the military is overstressed to the breaking point. You’ve got these young men and women going in for their second, their third, their fourth tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the things we cover in that special tonight is the role of private contractors, not just to do jobs that were traditionally done by the military in the past like laundry and cooking and driving trucks, but also quasi-military jobs.

MR. RUSSERT: Black water.

MR. KOPPEL: We have 100,000 private contractors in Iraq. They have sustained over 800 casualties. When I say casualties, I mean KIA, killed, 2200 military, 800 civilian contractors. They are a major part of what is going on right now, and yet, the Congress knows very little about what they’re doing, the American public knows next to nothing about what they’re doing. And it has to be that all this emphasis is put on contractors because we don’t have the troops.

MR. RUSSERT: Used to be a simple rule: You don’t just send an army to war, you take a country to war.

MR. KOPPEL: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: And that seems to be lacking.

Let me turn to another issue confronting us, and that is the Scooter Libby conviction, a trial I—which I was involved in, regrettably. The headlines have been all over of—the papers. This is the one late from The New York Times: “No Calm After Libby Verdict, With To and Fro on a Pardon.”

“‘Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct,’ declared Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, taking a stance echoed by other congressional Democrats, some editorial writers and bloggers on the left.

“From the right” “an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which thundered” “‘the time for a pardon is now,’ a point of view shared by The Weekly Standard, National Review and conservative admirers and friends of Mr. Libby. Many of the calls for his pardon demanded immediate action, instead of a wait for appeals to wend their way through the courts.”

Michael Beschloss, the history of presidential pardons, in recent memory, here’s just a few: Richard Nixon, obviously pardoned by Gerald Ford; Caspar Weinberger, the former of secretary of defense; the national security adviser Robert McFarlane; and the—Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, all pardoned by George Herbert Walker Bush with the—because of their role in Iran-Contra. Dan Rostenkowski, former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, former CIA director John Deutch pardoned by Bill Clinton. Pardon of political appointees or political associates, is not rare.

MR. BESCHLOSS: It does happen. There are others we could mention. And maybe the most germane one is Caspar Weinberger. George H.W. Bush, when he was running against Bill Clinton, 1992, he felt the Friday before that election he was coming, and he was coming, about even with Clinton in the polls. He, to this day, feels that probably the biggest thing that defeated him was the issuance of the indictment of Caspar Weinberger, the Reagan defense secretary for the Iran-Contra scandal. And, if you look at the numbers, Bush began to sink through that weekend, and, of course, lost to Clinton on Tuesday. A month later he pardoned Weinberger, feeling that the process had been unfair, unfair and that Weinberger deserved it. George W. Bush, in many ways, has tried to separate himself from his father on all sorts of things, but it may well be that he may take a lead from his father here.

MR. RUSSERT: It is interesting about Scooter Libby. Michael Isikoff in Newsweek wrote this, that “Scooter Libby’s Pardon Problem,” he calls it, “There’s one significant roadblock on the path to Libby’s salvation: Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff does not quality to even be considered for a presidential pardon under Justice Department guidelines. From the day he took office, Bush seems to have followed those guidelines religiously. ... [The] regulations, which are discussed on the Justice” Department’s “Web site ... ‘require a petitioner to wait a period of at least five years after conviction or release from confinement (whichever is later) before filing a pardon application.’”

Dana Priest, the pressure is on President Bush to do something now. Supporters of Libby fear that he may be sentenced as early as June, perhaps forced to start serving time pending appeal. And even if that’s not the case, the appeal could be over within a year, well before George Bush would be leaving office.

MS. PRIEST: You know, and guidelines are guidelines. And this administration has shown its willingness to take those and do whatever it wants with them. So I don’t think that’s going to be an impediment. And the other issue is, why wouldn’t he do it? I mean, he, he believes in Scooter Libby, and as you—as you showed, he would not be alone in the crowd to pardon people. So I don’t think this would be a big surprise.

MR. RUSSERT: Would there be a political price to pay?

MR. DUFFY: Depends on when he does it, obviously. If this were at the end of a first term, obviously, it might be different. But at the end of a second, there are usually lots of pardons coming from presidents. I think both sides are going to be disappointed, Tim. I don’t think the left is going to get the president to forswear a pardon at all. I think, like Ronald Reagan said about Ollie North, he probably—if he ever comments on this, it’ll let the judicial process continue. On the other hand, I don’t think the conservatives are going to get their instant pardon either. So these things tend to come much later. There is a prospect that the, the judicial appeals and, and, and motions could carry well into 2008 and even past the election, just as that’s possibility. And then pardons tend to come much more easily, regulations or no regulations.

MR. RUSSERT: It is interesting, two jurors have spoken publicly, and both said that they’d be comfortable with a pardon, even though they believe that he should have been convicted.

MR. DUFFY: They, they liked Libby even though he didn’t actually testify. They heard him in grand jury tapes. And I—several of them said—the two that talked said that they felt that he was someone who was standing in for other people who had, perhaps, had a, a large roll that they don’t understand in the case, and that he was just the fall guy.

MR. BESCHLOSS: Anyone you have in mind, Michael?

MR. DUFFY: Well, there is—Scooter Libby was not just any White House aide. He was, you know, the chief of staff to the vice president. He held more hats than any chief of staff in that job has ever held. He was his—Vice President Cheney’s domestic policy adviser and his national security adviser and an assistant to the president. He only reported to two people—the president and the vice president.

MR. RUSSERT: The cover of your magazine this week, “The Verdict on Cheney.” And you write, Michael Duffy, “Cheney has become the Administration’s enemy within, the man whose single-minded pursuit of ideological goals, creaking political instincts and love of secrecy produced an independent operation inside the White House that has done more harm than good. ... More Republicans with each passing week have acknowledged privately what is felt across Washington when it comes to the Vice President: his time has passed.” And yet, vice president—the vice president is still an enormous ally and voice with the president.

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