O'Neill Investigated by Treasury Department; Airline Passengers to Undergo Stricter Security Checks
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone. Nothing like a bit of kiss and tell to get the old news cycle wound up and it's wound up pretty good tonight, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's account of his time in the Bush cabinet is just about the only thing talked about in those high power Washington lunches we suspect. The president wasn't much engaged. The president was the prisoner of his more experienced aides and on it went. So, here's a question. Does it matter? Is the country so polarized that even if everything the former secretary says is true, and we don't know that, does it matter? Will it change a single mind, a single vote, a single perception? We wonder. We don't wonder about the whip. We know exactly where it starts. Our Senior White House Correspondent John King with us tonight, John a headline.</s>JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, some Democrats say that account from former Secretary Paul O'Neill is proof to them the president exaggerated grossly the case for war in Iraq. The White House says it's all sour grapes. And, add this bit of intrigue, the Treasury Department now investigating whether the secretary improperly took any classified materials with him when he left.</s>BROWN: John, thank you. We'll get to you at the top today. Next to Iowa, a week away from the caucuses, our Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowley is there, Candy a headline.</s>CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: A rough debate last night capped off a couple of rocky weeks for Howard Dean and today he said he's not going to take it anymore -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: Candy. On to the controversial and new manifestation of the new normal at the airports, CNN's Brian Cabell has been working the story today, Brian a headline.</s>BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, airline passengers will notice some changes in the months ahead. We'll all be undergoing background checks to ensure airline security. Not everybody is happy about it. Some say it's an invasion of privacy -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: Brian, thank you. And finally to Phoenix and a former Catholic bishop with lots of trouble, CNN's Frank Buckley with that, Frank a headline.</s>FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, Bishop Thomas O'Brien had avoided prosecution in the priest abuse scandal last summer by reaching an immunity deal. Just two weeks after that deal was announced he was charged with another crime, leaving the scene of a fatal accident. Today, the trial of Bishop Thomas O'Brien got underway.</s>BROWN: Frank, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly. Also coming up on the program tonight we'll meet the most important man in New Hampshire, the person who makes sure all the candidates can actually be heard. Later, in Segment 7, does anyone really mean it anymore when they say they're retiring? Roger Clemens said he's coming back and that set Jeff Greenfield to thinking. And finally, fresh out of retirement himself, by the way, the rooster stops by with a check of your morning papers for Tuesday, all that and more in the hour ahead. We begin tonight with what the treasury secretary saw, what the White House is saying about it and, now, what the Treasury Department is doing about it. What Paul O'Neill saw in his view was a president detached from the details, unconcerned about the deficit, preparing for war with Iraq long before 9/11, in short, a kind of empty suit and not exactly an honest one at that. His recollections fill a book that comes out tomorrow but they become the hot topic in Washington already. It culminated with an appearance on "60 Minutes" yesterday, which apparently for the administration was the last straw. We begin tonight with our Senior White House Correspondent John King.</s>KING (voice-over): In Mexico, the president would not say whether he feels betrayed by his former treasury secretary but strongly defended his decision to go to war in Iraq.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: September the 11th made me realize that America was no longer protected by oceans and we had to take a threat very seriously.</s>KING: The White House says it will not engage in a public point- by-point rebuttal of this new book, "The Price of Loyalty" in which Paul O'Neill not only questions the war but says the president leading a cabinet meeting is like a "blind man in a roomful of deaf people." Back in Washington, the Treasury Department launched a preliminary investigation into whether O'Neill broke the law in taking classified memos he is now using to help make his case.</s>PAUL O'NEILL, FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY: From the very beginning there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go.</s>KING: O'Neill discussed the memos with "60 Minutes," including this one ten days into the Bush presidency, designated "secret" that discussed planning for post-Saddam Iraq. Now Treasury officials want to know if O'Neill took classified materials not meant to leave government files. O'Neill's access to such memos came from his seat on the National Security Council. He told "TIME" magazine, "he never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterize as real evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." Countering O'Neill, senior Bush aides say the former secretary did not see the most sensitive intelligence, that regime change in Iraq became government policy in the Clinton administration and that from the beginning Mr. Bush and top aides made no secret they wanted to turn up the heat. Some Democrats say O'Neill's account is proof Mr. Bush exaggerated the case for war. In better days, the president called O'Neill a straight shooter. Now, White House allies are trying to limit the political fallout.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Most people will understand that a big element of this is sour grapes and the desire to get back at the guy that sacked you really.</s>KING: Now the president wouldn't say so today but senior aides and especially political advisers say O'Neill's account is a backstabbing betrayal. And, Aaron, at the Treasury Department tonight they are stressing they are not accusing the former secretary of anything but they say they have an obligation to look into it based on the "60 Minutes" report whether any classified information improperly left the building.</s>BROWN: Well, I think the reaction is interesting. A backstabbing it may be but that has nothing to do with whether or not it's true does it?</s>KING: Well, no it doesn't. There's a political aspect of this and a policy debate and what the administration says on the policy, I'll deal specifically with Iraq, you can follow up on any other question, is that of course this president, who inherited a regime change policy from the Clinton administration needed to go through as you check off a list in the early days. Do we keep this? If so, do we refine this? And they say Mr. Bush did very early on in the first days say we will keep this policy. Let's find a way to be more aggressive and let's explore our military options. Now the administration insists that's all the president was doing responsibly exploring. Secretary O'Neill thinks otherwise.</s>BROWN: John, thank you, our Senior White House Correspondent John King. Paul O'Neill is neither the first cabinet member to dump on his former boss nor even the first treasury secretary to do so. He is part of an inside-the-Beltway tradition that predates the Beltway by a stretch. Here to give us a better idea of how this episode measures up is David Gergen who does not predate the Beltway but who's been around quite a while nevertheless. We're always pleased to see him, hi, David.</s>DAVID GERGEN, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: Hi, Aaron.</s>BROWN: You've known the former secretary a good, long time so let's start with that. Would he make any of this up?</s>GERGEN: I don't think so, Aaron. One can say, the Bush White House can say that this is a very disaffected man. There is sour grapes here. They can also say he was disloyal. He violated the traditional rules of what one ought to say about a president. But it's difficult to say that Paul O'Neill is dishonest. He's had a long time reputation in Washington stretching back to the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, when I first knew him and, by the way, when Dick Cheney first came to appreciate him as much as he did when Dick Cheney was serving as President Ford's chief of staff and he did have a reputation then and now as a straight shooter. Yes, he's a maverick. Yes, he may even be naive. I can certainly understand why the Bush White House is extraordinarily angry at him. It does violate the traditions that when you leave a president, the man who appointed you. You let a discreet interval pass before you publish your memoirs. You let a discreet interval pass, in particular in an election year. You don't come out and say anything which discredits your boss. So, I think that he has violated the rules and I'm disappointed and I think he made a mistake in doing that but on the question of whether he's speaking the truth or not as he saw it, I would have to tell you that I would give him heavy credence on him telling it as he saw it. Others may have seen it differently, the same episodes.</s>BROWN: Does it surprise you, it surprised me, does it surprise you at all the paper he walked out with?</s>GERGEN: I'm astonished by the amount of paper he turned over to Mr. Suskind. People do leave with a lot of paper sometimes, Aaron, and 19,000 pages sounds like a terrific amount but I've seen people leave with box loads and box loads. What really stunned me was that he turned it over at this early stage and I think that the question of whether he also turned over classified documents is relevant. It is important because, of course, that is a violation of federal criminal law. If he did not turn over classified documents it seems to me the Bush administration would be better to let this go, to let it sort of, you know, recede from our midst. If they're going after him through the Treasury Department it will only keep this story alive. I thought the White House was shrewd in the first 24 hours when the press secretary and others came out and said we essentially disagree with him and we're moving on.</s>BROWN: But now they've at least guaranteed a little bit longer of having to deal with the whole issue.</s>GERGEN: Yes.</s>BROWN: Because, at the very least, we have to wait for Treasury to respond as it's going to respond and that will raise questions about boy they sure moved quick on this. They didn't move so quickly on the White House leak on Joe Wilson and it just kind of goes on and on.</s>GERGEN: I agree with that and you remember the 16 words in the president's speech about the Iranian from Niger in Africa that they turned into a 16 day story by beating up on it every day. In this kind of instance, I thought the White House's first response or first instinct was exactly the right one and that is we totally disagree with Paul O'Neill. We're angry and disappointed that he would do this but we're moving on. We're not going to delve back into ancient history. People have known all along that President Bush didn't like Saddam Hussein.</s>BROWN: Let's -- I want to talk about the politics of this to the extent that it actually has legs.</s>GERGEN: Sure.</s>BROWN: Does it matter? Will it change any minds? Does it politically matter in that sense?</s>GERGEN: Aaron, this is always a hunch but my hunch is that it does not change the dynamics of the race in any fashion heading into the 2004 that President Bush remains in commanding lead in this election. His partisans are certainly going to continue to be for him. Where I think it does matter, it doesn't change a lot of votes but where it does matter is it gives the Democrats much more ammunition as they look ahead to debates with the Republicans, especially the fall debates. The Democratic candidate, whether it's Howard Dean or Wes Clark or someone else, can now stand up and when President Bush goes after him and say -- to say, you know, you said this one day and then you said this another day, they can come right back and say but look at what your treasury secretary, the man who sat across the table from you, the man who held the job that Alexander Hamilton held, look what he has said about you. That's where it gives Democrats ammunition. I don't think it changes the dynamics of the race. President Bush is still heavily favored as we head toward November, 2004.</s>BROWN: Good to see you, David. Thank you, David Gergen.</s>GERGEN: OK, thank you, Aaron. It's good to talk to you.</s>BROWN: Thank you. David Gergen on the Paul O'Neill mess and we'll see how long that goes on. On now to the intelligence that went into the terror alert that was partially but just partially lifted on Friday. As CNN's David Ensor reports now, homeland security officials believed they knew something of the who and the how and they were especially concerned about the when.</s>DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On December 24, based on intelligence about a terrorist threat, Air France Flight 68 from Paris to Los Angeles was canceled and U.S. officials now tell CNN intelligence pointed to the greatest risk the day after that al Qaeda wanted most of all to mark Christmas Day itself with terrorism. After canceling or delaying more than 20 flights in and out of the U.S. over the holiday period, officials say they still do not know whether they stopped an attack or were duped into disrupting aviation. Either way, though, experts say expect more of the same.</s>DANIEL BENJAMIN, CSIS: I think it is going to be a fact of life because we know that al Qaeda continues to have a high degree of interest in aviation as a threat.</s>ENSOR: Knowledgeable officials say the specific tactical intelligence about threatened flights that helped prompt code orange over the holidays was compelling and came from multiple sources. They included informants, chatter, Web sites, top al Qaeda prisoners under interrogation and surveillance of al Qaeda suspects. Officials say security at airports around the world with flights to the U.S. must be further beefed up since al Qaeda clearly still wants to repeat its success of September 11 and with good reason.</s>BENJAMIN: I did some calculations about the amount of energy that was released when the two planes hit the World Trade Center and it was in the same range as a tactical nuclear weapon.</s>ENSOR (on camera): The good news, U.S. officials say they are getting ever more and better fine grain intelligence on al Qaeda, the bad news cancellations and delays of flights for security reasons are likely to be an ongoing part of modern life. David Ensor, CNN, Washington.</s>BROWN: That is perhaps the most visible manifestation of the new normal. Another is hidden away behind a check-in counter. You'll never even know it's there unless you happen to be among the people being searched for a second time at the gate or perhaps turned away entirely. Airlines make those decisions with the help of computer software, the details of which are a carefully kept secret but, in general, it seems to flag travelers who travel at the last minute, who buy one way tickets, who pay in cash. Experts call the system something less than perfect. A sequel rolls out later this year. It's supposed to be smarter and that has some people worried. Here's CNN's Brian Cabell.</s>CABELL (voice-over): The plan, known by the acronym CAPS 2, calls for a computerized background check of all airline passengers. That would include law enforcement and some commercial</s>ASA HUTCHINSON, TSA UNDER SECRETARY: We're not going to be retaining information in the government databases on individuals. It's simply a check on commercial databases as to who should have secondary inspection to assure the safety of the passengers.</s>CABELL: Once checked each passenger would be assigned a numerical score in color. Red would classify the passenger as a security risk and prevent the person from boarding. Yellow would call for further scrutiny. Green, which the government says would apply to the vast majority of passengers, would allow for relatively quick boarding, a bad idea say privacy advocates.</s>BILL SCANNELL, DONTSPYONUS.COM: Never before in the history of our nation has government permission been required to travel freely in our own country. It's un-American. It's unconstitutional and it's just plain wrong.</s>CABELL: The government is negotiating with the airlines for their cooperation in CAPS 2. Delta initially volunteered but backed off when a Web site urged a boycott of the airline if it cooperated. JetBlue also ran into controversy last year when it voluntarily turned over passenger data to the military for an aviation security project. The Transportation Safety Administration insists the program will safeguard privacy and speed up security checks at the airport.</s>MARK HATFIELD, TSA: Right now we run about 14 to 15 percent of passengers are flagged under the current system to go through secondary screening. CAPS 2 should reduce that rate to five or less, five percent or less.</s>CABELL: A second program known as Registered Traveler is also in the works. It calls for passengers to volunteer information thereby clearing themselves ahead of time and allowing them to board quickly. It's less controversial than CAPS 2 because it's voluntary but critics say terrorists in so-called sleeper cells might figure out how to qualify as registered travelers. The two initiatives come on the heels of another program, US Visit that requires the photographing and fingerprinting of some overseas travelers entering the United States.</s>CABELL: And a couple of additional points about CAPS 2, which is the most controversial of these programs. When you make a reservation in the future under this program you will have to give your date of birth to help them track you. That has not been done in the past. And secondly, if you're not happy with your classification, say you're a red or a yellow, there will be a means to appeal that classification and perhaps to change it -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: But probably not on the flight you wanted to take.</s>CABELL: Probably not. You will probably be delayed at that point.</s>BROWN: Do we know what any of the sort of triggering components are? What would suggest that you ought to be not a red but to be a yellow?</s>CABELL: Well, for one thing they tell us if you are a violent felon that may trigger something. That doesn't mean you won't be able to fly but that will certainly entitle you to greater scrutiny. Any -- something along those lines would certainly delay you we think. But something like traffic tickets, no. That would not be a problem. Credit, they will not be checking your credit, anything like that. They assure us it will simply be something that signals to them that you are a possible threat, a possible violent threat on that plane.</s>BROWN: Brian, thank you, Brian Cabell in Atlanta. Welcome to the new normal. Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, legal troubles facing the former bishop of Phoenix, Arizona. He faces charges in a hit-and-run case, serious charges. And later, coming out of retirement is a way of life. Jeff Greenfield on why some folks just cannot stay away. From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.