FOX HANNITY & COLMES (21:00) May 17, 2002 Friday SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: All right. Welcome to HANNITY & COLMES. We're glad you're with us. I'm Sean Hannity. Coming up tonight, is the university that is considered to be the birthplace of free speech -- are they now limiting free speech, and why is one professor warning conservatives not to take his class? And is faith the key to finding peace in the Middle East? We'll be joined tonight by the Reverend Pat Robertson. Plus country music superstar Sara Evans will join us. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SARA EVANS, COUNTRY SINGER: ... gave me / Because it's all I waited for / And I could not ask for more... (END VIDEO CLIP) HANNITY: Also Sara's husband, Craig. He is making a run for Congress. He's going to be here tonight. And do you know which member of Congress once tied the knot with another superstar, Elizabeth Taylor? That's our HANNITY & COLMES question of the day. But, first, our top story on this Friday. President Bush responded today to criticism over how he handled warning signs of the September 11th attacks on the U.S. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people. (END VIDEO CLIP) HANNITY: He also said he had no clear indication that terrorists would hijack passenger planes and deliberately crash them. Did the president do enough with the information that he got? We're joined tonight by New York Congressman Charlie Rangel and foreign affairs expert, Fox News contributor Mansoor Ijaz. So, for the record, you're a Democrat.
HANNITY: Donated heavily to the Democratic Party. IJAZ: And still do. HANNITY: OK. I'm going to put up on the screen, if I can, "Los Angeles Times", December 5th, 2001, and -- these are your words, and we'll put them up there. "President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Usama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year. I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities." The reason I bring this up is because this is all about politics and this tactic of the Democrats to demonize a good president here. This wouldn't even be because you're saying Bush -- Clinton had a chance to get him. IJAZ: He did, and I think the thing that we have to be very clear about -- and let's compare apples to apples, if we can for just a minute. In the months leading up to the August, 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, there were several opportunities in which the Sudanese intelligence chief wrote directly to the director of the FBI's East Africa division and then later to Director Freeh as well, offering to share data with them to help them understand exactly what was going on at that time. That is precisely similar to what we have today. The difference was that, at that time, the political apparatus was blocking our FBI and our intelligence operatives from going on. HANNITY: So Bill Clinton and his administration -- they were offered multiple times Usama bin Laden on a silver placet, and they didn't take it. IJAZ: The FBI... HANNITY: And you negotiated it. IJAZ: The FBI is on the record as having said that, when we went and tried to look at the data, the State Department blocked us over and over and over again from making those trips. HANNITY: Charlie Rangel, I want to tell you something. I think Democrats hit a low when they had a radio ad in Missouri in 1998 that said, "If you elect a Republican, another black church is going to burn." The NAACP ad was bad. When Democrats scare old people over Social Security and say Republicans have a plan to take it away from them, it's awful. This is a low for the Democratic Party, to exploit the tragedy of 9/11 for political purposes, and the evidence that this is political is that they're not saying a word about what this man negotiated with Sudan, to have Usama handed over. They'd be calling for investigations into that. REP. CHARLIE RANGEL (D), NEW YORK: You're such an exciting television personality. (LAUGHTER) RANGEL: You can put so many words together that one would forget the question. (CROSSTALK) HANNITY: ... Charlie. This is serious. RANGEL: I was so... HANNITY: This is... RANGEL: Listen... HANNITY: This is really a new low for the Democratic Party. RANGEL: I was so intrigued by listening to this distinguished gentleman because I was confused as to what really happened when the president was... HANNITY: Democrats are often confused. RANGEL: Thank you. HANNITY: Not you usually, but... RANGEL: It's all right. Hey, the president is vacationing at his ranch. He gets these reports that something terrible could happen, and it does happen, and we've been trying to figure out in the Congress what went wrong so that we can prevent it from happening, and I get on your show and find out it was Clinton's fault. That was Clinton's fault. ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: You know... HANNITY: He negotiated it. (CROSSTALK) COLMES: You know what's really amazing? RANGEL: ... asked him, "Did you negotiate it?" COLMES: Mansoor, you know what's truly amazing? RANGEL: Holy mackerel. COLMES: Because -- this is happening on Bush's watch, Clinton is no longer president, I hate to inform you, and no one is pointing a finger at George Bush and saying... HANNITY: Yes, they are. COLMES: Hold on a second. HANNITY: Read the quotes. COLMES: Hold on a second. Nobody is pointing a finger at George Bush and saying he purposely did nothing and knew. What they're saying is that maybe he didn't connect the dots properly. Let me show you what happened at a meeting with Dick Clark, the chief counterterrorism expert of the United States. This was in July, and he spoke to the FAA and the FBI and a number of top officials who were there, and here is what he said. He said, "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon," and that was during the summer, and Condoleezza Rice mentioned al Qaeda, and George Tenet urged 20 friendly foreign intelligence services to arrest a list of known al Qaeda people back in July. There were all these indications. Why wasn't this all put together? IJAZ: The problem with what you're saying, Alan, is that you're laying it out as if it is, in fact, already connected together. We can do that very easily in hindsight. COLMES: Somebody should have connected it. IJAZ: In hindsight, it's very easy to do that. At that time -- Dick Clark's a very smart guy, and he's worked very hard on counterterrorism issues for a long time. The problem with what you're saying is the following. When we talk about what the Clinton administration did or did not do, you have to delineate what the FBI and CIA as intelligence apparatus of the United States were tasked to do and what the political apparatus blocked them from doing. COLMES: I'm not talking about the Clinton administration. IJAZ: No, I know. COLMES: I'm talking about the Bush administration. IJAZ: When you talk about the Bush administration, the difference is that the FBI and the CIA had the same task. They provided the information, but somebody within the framework was not able to piece it all together in time. HANNITY: Well, it... IJAZ: It's not a matter that they didn't try. It was in time. COLMES: Charlie, you... RANGEL: You know what's sad about this whole thing? And no one can afford to be partisan. We only have one president. We've been attacked by a foreign force, and really, whatever differences we've had politically, we have put those behind. The sad thing is when a president of the United States has to say what President Bush had said, "Believe me, had I known, I would have done something." That pains me because there's nobody in this country that doesn't believe that he would have done something had he known. COLMES: Absolutely. HANNITY: But the Democratic attacks are saying just the opposite, Charlie. RANGEL: Let me tell you we have Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate that are saying exactly this. "We've got to find out why the president was not better informed." And we have to do it. We have to do it... HANNITY: I agree with you. RANGEL: ... to prevent this from happening again. HANNITY: I -- that's sensible, but... RANGEL: Nobody... HANNITY: ... the Democrats that have been attacking him for two days were not saying that. RANGEL: Nobody -- the only thing I saw was a New York newspaper, which was a silly paper that had a silly headline, "The President Knew," but no one believes that the president knew, and no Democrat or Republican can say that he knew we were going to be attacked and did nothing. HANNITY: We're going to take a break. We're going to come back. We'll continue with this debate in just a moment. And then, does the politics of Palestinian resistance -- does that sound like a class that you'd like to take? Well, you can't if you're a conservative. Oh, really? Free speech on a college campus. |
And can there ever be peace in the holy land? The Reverend Pat Robertson will join us. And then later on, Sara Evans, straight ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) COLMES: Still ahead tonight, why is a course on the Middle East raising concerns at U.C. Berkeley? We'll bring you that story in just a few minutes. And the Reverend Pat Robertson tells us what he thinks it will take to bring peace to the Middle East. We continue now with Congressman Charlie Rangel and Mansoor Ijaz. Look, Cynthia McKinney asked, you know, what did the government know. We -- Dick Gephardt said, you know, we want to ask some questions. We want to know what was known. We want to get the answers. That's what Democrats are saying, and they get raked over the coals simply for saying we want to ask some questions, as if you don't have in a democracy the right to either dissent, to ask questions of the government. Since when is the government always right, and since when should Democrats be demonized simply for asking salient questions which should be asked in any democracy? IJAZ: I'm a Democrat, and I've been asking those questions for the last seven months since September 11th happened, and I've been going out there and saying there is a very simple reason why we have to find out what happened and see to it that it never happens again, and that is -- And Congressman Gephardt in that sense is complicit in all of this because three -- two years ago when he had an opportunity to appoint an American of the Islamic faith, Palestinian origin, to a counterterrorism commission -- of Iraqi origin, what did he do? He had him removed from the commission. This is the kind of stuff that should not go on in this country. America... COLMES: Let's not get sidetracked here. IJAZ: No. Just give me one sentence. RANGEL: No, let him go on. I want to know how these... (CROSSTALK) RANGEL: This is the only guy that's making sense. IJAZ: American Muslims have been trying to help this country for a long time... COLMES: I agree. IJAZ: ... understand what is going on in the radical Islamic world. COLMES: Absolutely. IJAZ: We have to do that. Until we get that done, I'm telling you there is no way that this country has the capacity to understand these people. COLMES: What I'm trying to do is avoid this political game, Democrats pointing at Bush, Republicans pointing at Clinton. That's an evil game, especially in light of the fact... IJAZ: Agreed. COLMES: ... that we should come together now after September 11th and in a unified manner go after who the enemy actually is, which is not Republicans and Democrats. RANGEL: I think really the Republicans have moved forward. Shelby is a Republican. Goss is a Republican. We all agree that we shouldn't make this a partisan issue. But, my fellow Democrat, I think it's really a stretch if you're going to have me to understand that this tragic, horrific event that took place on 9/11 -- that the responsibility should be at the feet of Richard Gephardt and former President Bill Clinton. I mean, that is a stretch... IJAZ: The issue there... RANGEL: ... and I don't know why you omitted Hillary because... (LAUGHTER) IJAZ: With due respect, the issue that I'm raising is a very simple, and that is, if you are going to tackle these problems, you have to find a way to preemptively strike. These are people who are hell bent on destroying our way of life. The only way you can hit them is to hit them before they get... HANNITY: Hey, Mansoor... RANGEL: Let me ask this. IJAZ: That's the problem. RANGEL: Bush did not understand this when he took office. He didn't understand it when he was on the ranch. He didn't understand it when the FBI gave him the information. I mean, OK. The... HANNITY: There was no specific threat, Charlie. No specific threat. IJAZ: Hang on a second. RANGEL: But I'm saying that, if Clinton knew and it's the same FBI and CIA, Bush understood nothing when he got there to the ranch? IJAZ: No, no. HANNITY: I don't see where this... IJAZ: Congressman, if I may say one thing about that, and that is that I have worked with this White House's national security team as much as I did with the previous administration. These people... RANGEL: What's your job when you work with these people? IJAZ: Just as a private citizen... (CROSSTALK) IJAZ: Just as a private citizen trying to understand what's going on to protect our national security, and I can tell you... (CROSSTALK) RANGEL: How many any other private citizens do we have doing this type of thing? IJAZ: I don't know, but I hope -- I think we need a lot more. HANNITY: All right. I'm going to -- I want to move this on. Where politics is involved here is we've had all these demands. What did the president know? When did he know it? We've heard it from just about every Democrat that's been on a TV show. RANGEL: You've heard it from Republicans as well! HANNITY: Wait. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait. Where the hypocrisy is and where the evidence of politics is involved and the root cause of all this is here you say you had an offer from Sudan, you negotiated it on behalf of the administration, to take Usama bin Laden, and not one of these Democrats has asked you or brought you before a committee, have they? IJAZ: No, they have not. HANNITY: No. And that's the hypocrisy. Now I want to put up for our audience one other thing. RANGEL: This is fantastic. HANNITY: There's been... RANGEL: You know, I'd like to know who your witnesses are because we can resolve a whole lot of problems. HANNITY: The thing is -- Charlie... RANGEL: What... HANNITY: That doesn't bother you, Charlie? RANGEL: It bothered me that he was negotiating for our government, I'll tell you that. Oh, I'm sorry. HANNITY: Now I want to get into this issue because there's been these claims that the vice -- that the administration didn't disclose this before, and I'm going to take you back to September 15th, four days after the September 11th attacks. It was on "Meet the Press." Dick Cheney was the guest, and I want to show you this exchange. Dick Cheney said, "Certainly, we were surprised in the sense that there had been information coming in that a big operation was planned, but that's sort of a trend that you see all the time in these kinds of reports." He admitted it then. Russert, "No specific report." "No specific threat involving a domestic operation or involving what happened, obviously, so, clearly, we were surprised." That is consistent -- wholly consistent with every -- the big news that came out this week. RANGEL: How did the president know so fast based on that scanty information that it was Usama bin Laden? He said it just like that, that it was Usama bin Laden responsible for this. HANNITY: You answer your question, Charlie. Are you insinuating he knew but didn't say anything? RANGEL: No, I am insinuating -- I am stating the fact that he had all of this mishmash information and no one took the time to say, "He's a new president. He's new to international politics," and they should have spelled it out. HANNITY: You know -- you know what's outrageous here? RANGEL: The FBI, the CIA were not talking with each other. HANNITY: The Democrats are exploiting a tragedy for political gain. I mean, I know they play the race card. I know they scare old people. Don't you draw the line here? RANGEL: You know, just because the president did not respond the way we all would have liked him to -- it's not just Democrats that are asking the question. If the terrorists are going to win, you know what happens? It freezes... HANNITY: This is for politics. RANGEL: How -- what's for politics? The president already said... HANNITY: They don't want to hurt the president's approval rating. RANGEL: That's the only president we have... COLMES: We've got to go. RANGEL: ... and, believe me, what... COLMES: We've got to go. RANGEL: ... the president is doing he's doing to himself. COLMES: All right, Mansoor. Congressman. Thank you both very much. Coming up, meet the Berkeley graduate instructor who encouraged conservatives to not take his class. RANGEL: I don't want to leave. I don't want to just walk away. COLMES: They want to stay and argue... RANGEL: We're going to continue this debate in the green room. COLMES: Later, the Reverend Pat Robertson will join us to discuss the Middle East. We'll continue on HANNITY & COLMES. |