NewsNight with Aaron Brown

BROWN: Some leading Senators today signed on to something that if it comes to pass would be a first. John King made mention of it at the top of the program. They’re gathering support to persuade or, if it comes to it, to force the White House to make public 28 pages of the congressional 9/11 report, pages they say deal with Saudi Arabia. The president says to do so would jeopardize national security. The Senators, including Republican Sam Brownback, believe otherwise.

They say the details are embarrassing perhaps but vital also to the public’s understanding of the relationship with Saudi Arabia, just one of the subjects we’ll try and cover with Jim Woolsey, former director of the CIA during the Clinton administration, currently serves on the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Board and he joins us tonight from Aspen, Colorado, good to see you, sir again.

JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Good to be with you, Aaron.

BROWN: Any reason why — the people who have seen these pages, who have read the report say that it does, in fact, talk about the Saudi connections and the like. Why not release it?

WOOLSEY: Well, it’s hard to say without anybody outside the classified circles having seen it because the president says it deals with sources and methods and some important Senators and now not just of the opposing party but also Senator Brownback, who is a very serious man on these issues, say they think it ought to be released and that it essentially would not harm national security. We’ve got a direct conflict here between responsible people who are looking at the same 28 pages. It’s interesting.

BROWN: Is our national relationship with Saudi Arabia such that they ought to be protected in this way if, in fact, that’s what those pages deal with?

WOOLSEY: Well, the Saudis are complicated. They’ve been a huge problem in not working with us on terrorism investigations in the past. Prince Nayef, the Interior Minister, has been particularly bad on this over the years. He’s the one Saudi minister who has said on the record that 9/11 was, in fact, done by the Jews. He’s a real problem.

But, I think there are other factions in the Saudi royal family and there’s something of a contest here. Now, in the aftermath of the attacks in Saudi Arabia a couple of months ago, the Saudis are probably scurrying around trying to figure out how they can help on things that would harm both the United States and Saudi Arabia but not undermine things that they want to keep private so it’s kind of a mess.

BROWN: I want to try a couple of different areas too. A surprise that to this point, are you surprised at this point that there hasn’t been more success in the search for weapons in Iraq?

WOOLSEY: Well, I think people need to keep in mind the volumes here. Anthrax, for example, Saddam admitted making 8,500 liters back when he was finally confronted in ’95, when his son-in-law defected, who was the head of the biological weapon program.

And that sounds like a lot, but, you know, that’s about 8.5 tons, that’s less than half a tractor-trailer load, and if it was reduced to powder, it’d be, say four or five medium-sized suitcases worth.

So some of material they are looking for here may not be massive. And it may have been, in part, destroyed. It may have been hidden. It may not have been produced in some of the volumes that people thought.

But I think it’s incontrovertible that he had strong chemical and bacteriological programs and was trying to do something. It’s not entirely clear exactly how far he had gotten along on the nuclear side.

I imagine they’ll find a lot of evidence of what, in fact, happened as they’re able to debrief Iraqis who are no longer afraid of the Ba’athists coming back to power. I think that’s the key thing.

BROWN: Are you surprised they haven’t found it yet? That’s pretty direct. Are you surprised?

WOOLSEY: Well, I — they may have found more than, so far, they are saying, because they don’t want to get tripped up by releasing things partly. They’ve got the right guy looking for it now. David Kay is a very serious man, and he’s really experienced in these areas, and he’s very objective. He’s a fine public servant.

And I think they may finally, just as they’ve gotten around to Paul Bremer running the civilian authority, General Abizaid, they’ve got a very good team now. But took them awhile to get this all together, particularly to get Kay over there. He probably should have been there right at the beginning.

BROWN: And one more before we let you go. Are you — have your views on the nature of the attacks against the Americans soldiers over there changed over time, from what you thought 90 days ago or 60 days ago to how you see those attacks today?

WOOLSEY: Not a lot. I think this is still principally a problem of the Tikritis, the clan of Saddam’s that are Sunni Arabs inside the Sunni Triangle, and a few places like Mosul, where they were able to establish some base of operations. So far it does not look like it involves the Kurds at all, which is 20 percent of the country. And the Shi’ite areas in the south and central part of the country look reasonably quiet.

This fellow Sader (ph), who is one of the Shi’ite religious leaders, is close to the Iranians, and he’s trying to cause some trouble, but most of Shi’ite religious leaders are keeping things calm.

That’s the key, if the Shi’ites stay calm and working with us, we’ve got a very good chance of, I think, suppressing the Ba’athists in the Sunni Triangle and making this all work. If the Shi’ites turn against us, we got serious troubles.

BROWN: Good to see you again, sir. Enjoy your time in Aspen. We are a bit envious of that. Thank you, sir, very much.

WOOLSEY: Thanks.