"Face the Nation" transcript: October 16, 2011
Below is a rush transcript of "Face the Nation" on October 16, 2011, hosted by CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer. The guests are Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg News, CBS News Chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell and CBS News political analyst John Dickerson.
You can watch the full show by clicking on the video player above.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Today on FACE THE NATION, operation Fast and Furious. Why would the government allow thousands of guns to walk across the border to Mexico? It was an operation implemented by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to trace guns getting into the hands of the Mexican drug cartel. But when border patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in Arizona and two of the guns sent undercover by the U.S. government into Mexico were found at the crime scene, the program exploded in controversy. Could one of those walked guns be responsible for the death of a federal agent? The head of the ATF has stepped down. A U.S. attorney in Arizona has resigned and lesser officials have been transferred or replaced. But questions remain. Who instituted the program? What did attorney general Eric Holder know about it, and when?
ERIC HOLDER (Attorney General): I'm not sure of the exact date but I probably have heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Was there a cover-up, a scandal or is it all just politics? We'll talk to Congressman Darrell Issa, the congressional chairman investigating the Justice Department's role and Congressman Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on his committee. We'll also bring in CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson who first broke the story. And then, we'll talk politics and get the latest on the Republican presidential race from Chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell, political analyst John Dickerson and Bloomberg News's Julianna Goldman. It's all ahead on FACE THE NATION.
ANNOUNCER: From CBS News in Washington, FACE THE NATION with Bob Schieffer.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And good morning again and welcome to FACE THE NATION. And joining us Congressman Darrell Issa who took that old red eye to get here and be with us this morning from his district in San Diego. Also CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson who-- who broke this story. Mister Chairman, thank you so much for--
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA (Chair, Government Reform & Oversight Committee): Thank you for having me on, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: This whole business about this operation Fast and Furious really blew up last December, as we said in the opening, when border patrol agent Brian Terry was killed and two guns connected to this operation were found at the scene of the crime. The FBI has said the evidence was inconclusive as to whether those guns were the ones responsible for this murder. But I understand you've learned there may have been another gun at the scene of the crime, and I understand you're writing to the FBI director to ask for more information. Are--are you suggesting, sir, that the FBI may have tampered with evidence at the scene?
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Well we're not suggesting that but when you have tickets that are numbered two and three and there's no ticket one. In other words, the weapon-- one weapon has a two, one has a three on it, there's no one. When agents who were at Brian Terry's funeral made statements to his mother indicating that there were three weapons, when the two weapons that they have tested don't conclusively match up, then you look and say, well, was there a third weapon at the scene? Were there additional people who escaped with weapons? The Terry family has-- has suffered a great deal, and it doesn't seem like the answers are coming. More importantly, our investigation has never been about trying to get to the top of the problem, we're trying to get to the bottom of the problem. See, who thought it was a good idea, who allowed it to-- to continue, sort of go up the chain to find out all the places that this should have been stopped, but wasn't.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, but let me ask you, why would it be important to find a-- a third gun? Are you suggesting that maybe that might be the gun, that evidence shows was the murder weapon and for some reason the FBI has not disclosed that?
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Well, we certainly want to know in some cases as you know, there are investigations where there's materials that people feel are very sensitive. If that's the case, tell us their sensitive materials are being withheld but all along in this case, there have been undercharging, initially the people involved in-- in these weapons trafficking, at least one of them was undercharged. In other words, not charged in connection to Brian Terry's murder. So, there's been that sort of inconsistency. And again, we know that under the Bush administration, there were similar operations but they were coordinated with Mexico, they made every effort to keep their eyes on the weapons the whole time. So, we're not per se saying that tracing weapons is a bad idea.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay. Well Sharyl, what do you-- what do you make of this?
SHARYL ATTKISSON: I was going to ask, could you explain why law enforcement would theoretically, if it happened, tamper with the evidence, what are the bigger implications beyond the Terry family as to why there could be something going on at the scene that would be so important that we still wouldn't know what happened there ten months later?
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Well, you know, when I asked the attorney general when he knew about Fast and Furious, I expected any number of answers except the one that it had only been a couple of weeks, more than a month after the President had made a statement about Eric Holder not authorizing it. You get these inconsistencies in an investigation as you know because you are an investigative reporter. You-- you follow the inconsistencies. Some of them lead nowhere. In this case, these inconsistencies and the fact that the family is still not getting the kind of treatment you would expect as crime victims and crime victims of the law enforcement officer, cause us to say, well, let's look at the FBI. You know, Kenneth Nelson and other cooperating witnesses have made it clear that there is a general pattern of play a shell game with Congress, we'll take care of this ourselves. And as you know, the FBI has a history in some cases of working with felons and criminals and hiding their other crimes in order to keep an investigation going.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So--
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: We thought that was behind us but it might not be.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So, in order words, what you're suggesting is that if this other gun, it was shown to be the murder weapon and it was one of these weapons tied to this program, it would conclusively tie this program to the murder. That's what-- that's basically what you're trying to find out.
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: If-- if that-- if that-- if-- if weapon number one that appears to be missing were in fact--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay.
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: --ballistically matched, then we would have an absolute rather than this inconsistency, but wha--
SHARYL ATTKISSON: Or if-- can I say or--
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Sure.
SHARYL ATTKISSON: --if this weapon were matched to a confidential informant that was being used by DEA or FBI or another agency, there-- there are a lot of questions out there because other agencies were involved in this operation. And we don't know what we don't know.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, let me-- let me move on. You have subpoenaed hundreds, some say thousands of pages of documents relating to this from-- from the Justice Department. The Justice Department says, frankly, they want to cooperate but they say you're just showboating when you-- when you launch a subpoena like that.
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Yeah. Well, Bob, you know, when you get a black cow at midnight eating a licorice and they tell you they gave you a thousand pages, I have countless pages that look like this. And many of them, when we actually get to some of the details, there's clearly details that have been redacted that we should have. Our-- our subpoenas have been very narrow. In some cases it's because a whistle-blower gives us a document. And-- and Sharyl has been very involved in-- in these activities in her own way too. We have a document. It causes us to narrowly ask for a document to get the same document but ensure that it's authentic. Often we get it redacted when the original one we look at underneath should give it to us. We have tried to be narrow. In some cases like emails, we've asked for a window of less than three days worth of one person's emails. But again, we haven't had the cooperation you would expect from the Justice Department when they know they've made a horrible mistake.
BOB SCHIEFFER: I understand that you already have some documents. But you're subpoenaing the original documents.
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: That's correct.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Are you suggesting then that maybe some of these documents have been tampered with?
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Well, again, when you black out a document and there is responsive information underneath, that's a form of tampering. We're not accusing any one of a criminal cover-up. But we have an obligation, a real obligation to the Terry family and a real obligation to the constitution to follow this to ensure that Justice Department in all of its tentacles in law enforcement do the kind of job that witnesses who came from there said they want to do and they always do.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Are you going to ask the attorney general to resign?
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: You know, that's for the President to decide. Many have called for it. What I've done is joined with Lamar Smith who has invited the attorney general to come back to judiciary, the committee where he made his less than accurate statement.
BOB SCHIEFFER: He said that he was not aware of the details of all of this. You're--
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: No. Well--
BOB SCHIEFFER: --suggesting he may have known?
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: --Bob, no, he didn't. What he said was he first heard of this program a few weeks before. If he now wants to say that he knew a lot about it from the at least five briefings he had but he didn't know as much, we'd like him to come back and say, okay, that was an inaccurate statement. Here's what I knew and when I knew it. Because his chief of staff had intimate details, we have notes in his-- his handwriting that shows that the number two and Eric Holder's right hand had intimate details for a long time. So one of the questions is why wouldn't you tell your boss about a program that had gotten so out of control that it had all kinds of people scurrying to try to stop it?
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Are you saying then that the attorney general knew a whole lot more about this than he testified to when he came before the Congress?
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: He clearly knew more than he-- than he said when he said he only first heard of this program a few weeks before. I take him at the word, but only if we can have the kind of dialogue that allows us to ask, if you will, the twenty questions. And it should be done at judiciary. It should be done by Chairman Smith because, in fact, it's the counterpart to Senator Grassley in the Senate. And Senator Grassley has never been able to get a hearing which is inexplicable that Senator Leahy would not be just as interested as-- as we are.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Congressman, I want to thank you very much for coming.
REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Thank you, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: A little earlier this morning, Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings, who is the ranking democrat on Mister Issa's committee, spoke with us this morning. And here's what he said.
Congressman Cummings, what do you make of all this?
REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS (Ranking Member, Government Reform & Oversight Committee): Well, first of all, Bob, when a few months ago I met with the Brian Terry family. Brian Terry, of course, was the young man border patrol--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Who was killed?
REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS: --who was killed. And two guns from Fast and Furious were found at the scene. And that's-- you know, that's a-- and I promised them two things. One: that we would get answers for them. And two: that we would make sure that this never happened again. I think basically what we have here is a situation where we're not getting a responsible and balanced investigation. The Attorney General, when he found out about it, the first thing he did was immediately order an investigation by the (INDISTINCT). And the second thing he did is he sent out a-- a memo to all of his staff saying, look, this is not the way we operate. We do not let guns walk. And so basically you had an operation that started bottom up and not top down.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.
REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS: And so in other words, it-- it was hatched in the Phoenix office of the ATF. And the-- the sad part about it is that the supervisors in the Phoenix office never communicated with people higher up. And all the evidence that I've seen points that this was a more of a local issue that never got to higher-ups. And certainly there was nothing, that nobody has said that the attorney general was briefed about it.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you-- some people have actually said that Chairman Issa's on a witch hunt here. Do you-- do you agree with that?
REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS: I do. I think Chairman Issa has come up with some very unfortunate statements about the chief-- chief law enforcement officer in our country. And he's come up with these statements and then he goes in search of the facts. And we've seen this over and over again. For example, Bob, Mister Nelson who was in charge of the ATF has told us-- has told Mister Issa that he never communicated the controversial tactics with regard to Fast and Furious to attorney general holder. And as a matter of fact, fifteen folks in-- because you know why he didn't do it? Because he didn't know it. He didn't-- he didn't even know it. So then this is the head of ATF, and-- and we've also interviewed fifteen others in ATF, who said that-- that they didn't know it or it was not communicated either. This is and-- but yet and still, Chairman Issa goes out there and-- and Republicans accusing the highest law enforcement officer in the land of being an accessory to murder and things of that nature and calling for his resignation. All we want is what I said. We want a responsible and balanced investigation because we are the oversight and government reform committee. Bob, you cannot reform anything unless you have all the information. Just because if you don't like some facts you don't throw them out the door and say I'm not going to look at those. You look at the entire picture and that simply has not happened here.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, now you have condemned the attack itself.
REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Oh, no doubt about it.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But-- but let me-- let me ask you this. Here we are this border agent was killed last year.
REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Yeah.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And we still don't know who exactly was responsible for this program to move these guns into Mexico. Isn't it about time we found that out?
REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Yeah, we-- we-- and I-- and I think we're moving more and more towards that. Keep in mind we do know that it was the Phoenix office. We-- we know it was hatched there and that's all the-- all the testimony we have heard so far that's what we've heard. And I don't-- and I know that we will get to the-- the very bottom of it. But it is a-- a bottom-up and not a top-down situation. We know that for a fact.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Where do you see all this ending?
REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS: You know, it's hard to say. I've said over and over again we must-- we must pursue the facts wherever they may lead. And I have absolutely no doubt that we'll accomplish that.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Congressman, thank you so much for coming this morning.
REPRESENTATIVE ELIJAH CUMMINGS: Thank you, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: When we come back, we'll talk a little presidential politics with our round table.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: And back now with our panel, two members of CBS News political team here this morning, Norah O'Donnell, our chief White House correspondent; John Dickerson, our political analyst; and also joining us, Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg News, White House correspondent for them. And Julianna, I want to start with you because you were one of the questioners at the Republican debate last week. It seemed to me they pretty much just sort of stayed in place. What did you take away from it?
JULIANNA GOLDMAN (Bloomberg News): Well, you know, Bob, Herman Cain came across as very likable, authentic, compelling, but with his new front-runner status comes the scrutiny of a front-runner and questions about whether the 9-9-9 Plan really adds up. Rick Perry, he really came to that debate needing to play. He didn't have an economic plan to put forth. This was a debate focused only on the economy. He also did not use the opportunity to really hit Mitt Romney very hard on health care instead of talking about the need to block grant Medicaid dollars back to the states. And then Mitt Romney, he really did seem to be the most confident and comfortable on matters of the economy at the debate.
BOB SCHIEFFER: There seems to me, John, to be kind of a consensus in the political community that whether Republicans are excited about him or not, it looks like Mitt Romney is headed to the nomination.
JOHN DICKERSON (CBS News Political Analyst): Well, that's right. I mean he has stayed at a consistent level in the polls. He's gotten so much better as a candidate compared to the last time he ran. He's knowing when to-- to stay out of the fight and then when to engage. And at these debates, he's a competent person and he continues to win those questions about, can you beat Barack Obama? But the problem is there have been these candidates whether it's Trump or Perry or Bachmann or now Herman Cain that suggest that they just don't love Romney at-- and he has got a hope he can just weather out all of those flavors of the week until he's the last man standing.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Is Herman Cain for real?
JOHN DICKERSON: He is for real, but as Julianna mentioned, he has gotten trouble on the 9-9-9 Tax Plan from conservatives who don't like the sales tax piece. And when you talk to strategists on the political side who have his good fortunes in mind, they want him to do well. What they say is that, you know, he's been on a book tour. He hasn't been to Iowa in two months. He doesn't really have an organization there. And they say what he has got is lightening in a bottle. That's what they talk about this when you're the flavor of the month. But here the problem is it's all lightening and no bottle. He needs an organization to capture that enthusiasm and that's the worry about his ability to go forward.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Who do they-- they think is going to be the person they're going the run against at the White House, Norah?
NORAH O'DONNELL (CBS News Chief White House Correspondent): I think there was a growing sense this week that Mitt Romney is likely going to be the Republican nominee from the attacks from the Obama campaign in Chicago, also from the White House, which now wants to paint Mitt Romney as Wall Street's best friend. I heard from David Plouffe, the President's senior advisor, that there is, of course, growing anger at Wall Street amongst independents, Republicans and, of course, Democrats. They're going to paint Mitt Romney as a Wall Street sympathizer, someone who wants to roll back Wall Street reforms, who in the debate with Julianna this past week said that he is against a payroll tax, calling it a little band-aid. So that's going to be what's moving forward. I asked David Plouffe so are you going to paint him as a-- a Wall Street sympathizer or as a flip flopper. And he responded both. So I think that's the way this campaign is going to (INDISTINCT).
BOB SCHIEFFER: Now what about the Tea Party, is the Tea Party still a factor out there? And they're not all that happy about Mitt Romney, will they come around?
JULIANNA GOLDMAN: Oh, no, and that was one of the interesting back and forth during the debate was when we pushed Mitt Romney on whether or not if there's some sort of financial meltdown, would he do what Bush and Paulson did? Would he back another sort of Wall Street bailout or tarp? And he when-- after a lot of back and forth, he essentially said, yes. And that's something that could really come back to hurt him in the primary with conservatives.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you all both. I mean, while you all are concentrating on politics, a lot of people that don't have a job out there. Unemployment is still way up there at nine percent. The President put his plan out there this week, Congress couldn't even figure out how to vote on it. Where does that all go now, John?
JOHN DICKERSON: Well, it's interesting. We heard Herman Cain picking up on this attack-- similar attack to the one that White House is making on Mitt Romney. He says I'm the candidate of Main Street, Romney is Wall Street. That's what this is about. The people of Main Street who don't have jobs, I'm speaking to them. But there-- the-- the large group out there that don't have jobs who are frustrated, are frustrated with a politicians. And the politicians with their sound bytes and even their 9-9-9 Plan may not necessarily be talking to the people who don't have the jobs and are frustrated with a political system. They look at and they think nothing that you do is going to actually affect my lives-- life or change it.
BOB SCHIEFFER: What is he going to do now, Norah?
NORAH O'DONNELL: He is going to keep on this bus tour. I mean, the President is on a new bus tour to North Carolina and Virginia, two key battle ground states that, of course, Obama was able to turn blue in this past election. And they're going to start breaking up in pieces. The jobs plan and hope that Republicans can sign on to some of-- some of the parts of the President's jobs plan. But the White House still firmly believes that they're-- that the jobs plan is popular with the American people.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, do you think it has any chance, any part of it, any chance of passing, Julianna?
JULIANNA GOLDMAN: Well, probably the element that has the best chance is getting that payroll tax cut extended that expires at the end of the year. The White House would like to see that extended on the employer side and on the employee side. As well making the argument if Republicans push back against that, then the White House can come back and say, hey, we're for more tax cuts now than the Republicans are.
BOB SCHIEFFER: John, where do you think it goes?
JOHN DICKERSON: Well, I think you probably do get something in the end. The question is, you know, do people look at this and say, you know, they're just-- this is the minimum amount you can do. And we don't give you necessarily any credit for doing this very little bit that doesn't affect us in our life.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Does anybody here think the election will be about anything but the economy?
JULIANNA GOLDMAN: Well, no. And that's the other problem with what's likely to get passed from the President's jobs plan, the payroll tax cut extension and some of the others they might help the economy prevent another going back into a recession but they don't necessarily create jobs.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, we have just run out of time. I'll be back in a moment with some final thoughts.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, they will finally make it official today. The ceremony to officially dedicate the memorial to Martin Luther King Junior will take place on the National Mall in Washington. Neither rain nor snow, as they say, can deter the postman on his rounds. But a hurricane did and rightly so postponed the dedication of Doctor King's massive statue. So many of the people who had come to Washington or were on their way to Washington when the hurricane blew through last month came back this weekend to do the honors. The complications seemed fitting somehow and I wonder if Doctor King with a sense of irony might have smiled. Complications were nothing unusual for him. Everything he did was complicated and seemed impossible to many but him. The statue itself was and is controversial. Some just don't like it. Some saw one thing in it. Others saw entirely different things. Just as people sometimes saw only what they wanted to see in Doctor King. Just getting the memorial finished and getting the ceremony done was sometimes two steps forward, one step back, as it usually was with Doctor King's work. Some are still not happy with the memorial. But it is there now for all to see. Massive, imposing, but still only a reminder of the man it honors. His great work is his real memorial and will outlast any reminder, perfect or imperfect, that mortal man may undertake.
Back in a minute.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, that's it for us today. Thank you for being with us here on FACE THE NATION. We'll be right here next week, same time, same place. Thanks.
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