'Meet the Press' transcript for May 24, 2009

REP. GINGRICH:  Well, look.

SEN. DURBIN:  We know they're being held safely.  And when we checked with the director of FBI, Mr. Mueller, he said there's no question that supermax facilities, not a single escape, we limit the communication of these detainees and prisoners, and we can continue to do that.

REP. GINGRICH:  Well, first of all, I think we should, in fact, rethink how we are handling terrorist recruitment and terrorist propaganda in prisons because, as I said, last week there were four examples of people who were picked up in New York who had been converted in prison.  So then we need to rethink the terrorists who are currently in prison, design a specific facility for terrorists, keep them totally isolated from the rest of the prison population and put them somewhere.  And, and again, I think this is a, this is a hard problem that'll be around.

But let me also point out, Senator, al-Qaeda did not become a global concern after 9/11.  Al-Qaeda had been operating in Iran, in Iraq.  They had, they had bombed the United States forces in Saudi Arabia, they bombed two American Embassies in East Africa, they bombed the Cole in Yemen.  All of these happened before 9/11.  Now, it's true that in the, in the 1990s people in the Clinton administration didn't want to confront that this was a war; they kept trying to handle it as a criminal procedure.  In fact, it's very dangerous to go back to thinking of these guys as criminals.  This is a war and these are terrorists.

MR. GREGORY:  Let me bring it back to this week.  Senator Durbin, all but six Democrats voted in the Senate to block funding to support the president in his plan to close down the prison.  Why the defiance of their president, and do you think the speech this week by President Obama changed things?  If so, how?

SEN. DURBIN:  What I heard from my colleagues on the floor is we're waiting for the president's plan.  What is he going to do in terms of the future of Guantanamo and what will happen to the detainees?  On Thursday at the archives, National Archives, the president spelled this out clearly that he is going to follow the values of our Constitution, rule of law and transparency, there'll be real accountability, and he went through four or five different categories of how we'll treat these detainees.  I think at this point that you'll find members of Congress, I hope from both sides of the aisle, who will step forward and say now we have to find a way.

MR. GREGORY:  So...

SEN. DURBIN:  And I might add that that's going to include people like Lindsey Graham.  I've spoken to him, he's spoken on the floor.  I think there are ways we can come up with a bipartisan approach to implement the president's plan.

MR. GREGORY:  All right, but was it a mistake to bring the plan forward without the resolution for these detainees?

SEN. DURBIN:  Well, it was a mistake for us to entertain putting money, $80 million in for the transfer of these detainees until the president's plan was released.  And so that's why the NOA amendment was successful.

MR. GREGORY:  You'd be OK with al-Qaeda prisoners, those currently at Guantanamo Bay, in a prison in Illinois?

SEN. DURBIN:  Well, I'd be OK with them in a supermax facility, because we've never had an escape from one.  And as I said, we have over 340 convicted terrorists now being held safely in our prisons.  I just don't hear anyone suggesting releasing them or sending them to another country.  That isn't part of the prospect that we have before us.

MR. GREGORY:  Let, let me take a, a larger view here.  If you look at the question of how President Obama is trying to put his imprint on national security in this war against terrorists, two competing points of view from President Obama and Vice President Cheney, as we think about chapter two in the war on terrorism with the new administration.  Let's listen to both men and have you both react.

(Videotape, Thursday)

PRES. OBAMA:  The American people are not absolutist, and they don't elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems.  They know that we need not sacrifice our security for our values, nor sacrifice our values for our security so long as we approach difficult questions with honesty and care and a dose of common sense.

FMR. VICE PRES. CHENEY:  But in the fight against terrorism there is no middle ground, and half measures keep you half exposed.  You cannot keep just some nuclear armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear armed terrorist out of the United States.  Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  Why can't there be a middle-ground approach, some compromise with regard to how to fight terrorists?

REP. GINGRICH:  Well, I think there can be a, an effort to find a common agreement, but I don't think you can find--I don't think it's a question about compromise.  The thing that I think motivates Cheney, and I watched this firsthand after 9/11, is the shock of 9/11, the reality that his children and his grandchildren could die, that he has an obligation to America to take extra steps to keep us alive.  And I think this was burned into him that day and the following day, and the realization we had been caught totally off-guard.  Despite all the warnings of the '90s, we have been caught totally off-guard.  And so they did everything for seven and a half years to--and they have a very simple principle:  If you're in doubt, do what it takes to help America survive every time.  So they consistently fell down on the side of being very tough about national security, being very tough with specific terrorists.  And remember, the Obama administration has reserved to itself the same right to use enhanced interrogation techniques at the direction of the commander in chief that the Bush administration did.  They were used three times--they were used on three people who were known terrorists who had very high value information.  So I'm just saying it's, it's ironic; when you get below the speech, President Obama in many ways--he's now back to military tribunals...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

REP. GINGRICH:  ...you know, he's, he's, he's back to somehow keeping all these terrorists, even if not in Guantanamo, he is keep--he's reserving the right to use enhanced interrogation techniques in his administration, which by the way is absolutely correct...

MR. GREGORY:  But do you agree with the vice president when he says that the country is less safe under President Obama?

REP. GINGRICH:  Absolutely.

MR. GREGORY:  Why?

REP. GINGRICH:  Because I believe if you just look at the behavior of the last two months, the effort to open up past wounds--if you were a CIA employee today and you understood that there were people out there who wanted a truth commission, there are people who wanted to say to you, "I'm, I'm going to go back six, seven, eight years and I'm going to put you on trial potentially," if you look at what, what Speaker Pelosi said, "They all lied to--they lied to us all the time," the drop in morale, which frankly Director Leon Panetta, himself a former Democratic congressman, has testified, has said this has hurt morale.  The question is, is the most important thing to us today to find some kind of civil--American Civil Liberties Union model of making sure that we never offend terrorists, or is the model for us today to say to the CIA and others, "Do everything you can to protect America.  We're going to cover your back, we are proud of you and we want you to defend America"?

MR. GREGORY:  Senator Durbin, the vice president's--former vice president's daughter, Liz Cheney, said that President Obama has a September 10th mentality in his fight against terrorists.

SEN. DURBIN:  Let me say--if you, if you step back and take a look at history for a moment, you will find the message we just heard from Mr. Gingrich, from Vice President Cheney and Mr. Rush Limbaugh to be the same, it's a message of fear:  "Be afraid, be very afraid." And to say that this president is not doing everything in his power to keep America safe is just as irresponsible as anything I've ever heard said on your program.  This president is dedicated to the safety of America.  He has said clearly that he's not going to allow a single dangerous person to be released in the United States or be in a position to harm us.  He's doing everything night and day to keep us safe. But let's look at what we have here.  The president said in his speech--he didn't question the motives of those like Vice President Cheney, who thought they were keeping America safe.  The fact is, in a way it didn't work. Guantanamo became an inspiration for recruiting terrorists around the world. At the end of the day, it was President Bush in his second term who abandoned the Cheney approach, who said, "We're not going to use torture.  We're going to close down Guantanamo because it isn't working to keep America safe." Now, I just want to tell you, when people like General Colin Powell step forward and say to us, "Put torture behind us and close Guantanamo," I believe they are on the right track.  Here's a person who served our nation in the military and on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he believes we can keep America safe with a much better approach.  And this notion somehow that President Obama is not keeping America safe has been rejected by the American people.  They trust his leadership.

REP. GINGRICH:  Let me just say, I think people should be afraid.  I think the lesson of 1993, the first time they bombed the World Trade Center, was fear is probably appropriate.  I think the lesson of Khobar Towers, where American servicemen were killed in Saudi Arabia, was fear is probably appropriate.  I think the lesson of the two embassy bombings in east Africa was fear is probably appropriate.  I think the lesson of the Cole being bombed in Yemen was fear is probably appropriate.  I'll tell you, if you aren't a little bit afraid after 9/11 and 3,100 Americans killed inside the United States by an effort, if you weren't worried about the second-wave attack that was designed to take out the biggest building in Los Angeles, I think that, that you are out of touch with reality.

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