'Meet the Press' transcript for March 30, 2008

MR. TIM RUSSERT:  Our issues this Sunday, the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency:  its mission, its successes, its failures and its future challenges with Iraq, Iran, al-Qaeda and more.  With us, a Sunday morning exclusive interview, the director of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, only on MEET THE PRESS.

Then, should Hillary Clinton consider ending her campaign?  Yes, says New York Times columnist David Brooks.  No, says The New Republic's editor at large, Peter Beinart.  Brooks and Beinart square off on the race for the White House 2008.

But first, the CIA And here to talk about its role in a very difficult and complicated world is General Michael Hayden, his first Sunday morning interview as director of the CIA

General, welcome.

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN:  Morning, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT:  This was the scene yesterday in Basra, Iraq.  Shiite militiamen on the streets, holding their weapons.  What is going on in Basra, Iraq?

GEN. HAYDEN:  What we have is, is, is a very decisive act on the part of Prime Minister Maliki to get personally involved and commit his forces and his government to extending Iraqi government control over parts of Iraqi that, frankly, have not been under much central government control now for several years.  It's a very decisive moment; it's a very challenging thing.  I guess one would say that success is not guaranteed.  But when I, when I talked to my analysts on Friday afternoon, they said that, based on this effort, they expect the situation in Iraq to be better at the end of what's going on now than it was at the beginning.

MR. RUSSERT:  There are reports that the prime minister miscalculated the seriousness and the difficulty of rooting out these Shiite militiamen who had taken control of Basra.

GEN. HAYDEN:  It, it, it's a very difficult challenge that he's strapped on. He's strapped it on largely with his own forces, the I.S.F., the Iraqi, Iraqi Security Forces.  It has proven to be very, very difficult.  But I think the, the real telling moment, the real crossover point in all this is the political decision to take action.  I mean, I mean, a lot of people in this country have criticized the Iraqis for, for not stepping up, for, for not taking advantage of the breathing space that's been created by, frankly, coalition military activity.  Here's a case of an Iraqi leader stepping up.

MR. RUSSERT:  This is an article, Friday's paper:  "[Iraqi] Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ...  decided to launch the offensive without consulting his U.S. allies, according to administration officials.  With little U.S. presence in the south, and British forces in Basra confined to an air base outside the city, one administration official said that, `we can't quite decipher' what is going on.  It's a question, he said, of `who's got the best conspiracy' theory about why Maliki decided to act now." The United States was not informed by the Iraqis that we--he was going to do this?

GEN. HAYDEN:  I, I don't know what on--what went on on the ground in Baghdad prior to the operation.  I do know that this was a decision of the Iraqi government by the prime minister and personally by the prime minister, and that he's relying on Iraqi forces, by and large, to take this action.

MR. RUSSERT:  Were you aware of it?

GEN. HAYDEN:  I was--in terms of being prebriefed or, or having, you know, the, the normal planning process in which you build up to this days or weeks ahead of time, no.  No, I was not.

MR. RUSSERT:  You didn't know it was going to happen?

GEN. HAYDEN:  No more so than Dave Petraeus or Ambassador Crocker did.

MR. RUSSERT:  About 70 percent of the city of Basra controlled by Shiite militia.  Is the goal to have that entire city controlled by the Iraqi government?

GEN. HAYDEN:  Of course it is.  But, but this is going to have to happen in stages.  And, and you're right, about 70 percent of the city controlled by militia, armed gangs, criminal elements.  It's, it's, it's a real stew down there, Tim, in terms of the different factions.  And they were in a bit of an equilibrium between and among these armed factions over the past several months, and violence had been reduced.  But I don't think anyone could think that that equilibrium was an acceptable long-term solution.

MR. RUSSERT:  The prime minister said that the elements that were controlling Basra were "worse than al-Qaeda." Do you agree with that?

GEN. HAYDEN:  Their activity has mirrored some of the atrocities of al-Qaeda. I don't know that I'd try to sit back here and put a moral calculus on, on either of them.  But I do know this, all right?  They were beyond the writ of the Iraqi government, they were exercising the attributes of sovereignty, I mean, exclusive use of violence, for example.  It should be the province of the Iraqi state.

MR. RUSSERT:  I want to go back to '07 when Bob Woodward wrote a piece in The Washington Post about comments you made to the Iraqi Study Group, and have a chance to talk about that regarding Iraq.

"On the morning of November 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered ...  in the ...  Roosevelt Room of the White House.  CIA Director Michael Hayden ...  said, `the inability of the [Iraqi] government to govern seems irreversible,' adding that he could not `point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around,' according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.

"`The government is unable to govern,' Hayden concluded.  `We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balance, and it cannot function.'"

Is that an accurate assessment of what you said?

GEN. HAYDEN:  It's an incomplete assessment of, of what I said.  What, what I said was inability to govern or turn this around in the short term is, is what I precisely said.  And then I, I tried to use a sports metaphor.  I talked about running a marathon, and what I, what I said to the, to the group there is I'd run a marathon in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh's pretty hilly, as you know, and at about mile 21 there's a two-mile downhill stretch.  And as you get down to the bottom of that hill, it's only three miles to the finish and you run three miles before church on Sunday.  So I knew if I got to mile 22, there was a natural break that would begin to turn things into my favor.  What I was saying to the commission was, there were no longer any natural breaks lying ahead of us that would turn things in our favor.  It had to be done with just slogging through hard work.  There were no upcoming elections, for example, no upcoming changes in the political structure that would be natural breaks.  That's what I was trying to say to the committee.

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