Robertson Apologizes

Televangelist 'Spoke In Frustration' Calling For Chavez Assassination

(CBS/AP) 
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called Robertson's remarks "inappropriate."

"This is not the policy of the United States government. We do not share his views," McCormack said.

But the Bush administration does share many of Robertson's views on other matters, such as stem cell research, and Robertson's largely conservative, evangelical audience overlaps with the core of Mr. Bush's political base.

About nine of 10 white evangelicals voted for Mr. Bush in the 2004 election — about as high as his support from any group of voters, according to exit polls. This group also supported Mr. Bush overwhelmingly in the 2000 election.

McCormack tiptoed around the question of whether the rest of the world might assume that Robertson speaks, if not directly for President Bush, at least for a sizable share of the Republican Party.

"I would think that people around the world would take the comments for what they are," McCormack said. "They're the expression of one citizen."

Robertson supported Mr. Bush's re-election last year and said he believed the president is blessed by God. Robertson also told viewers of his "700 Club" television program that God had told him Mr. Bush would win re-election in a "blowout."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the Pentagon isn't in the business of killing foreign leaders, but he also did not denounce Robertson or his remarks.

"He's a private citizen. Private citizens say all kinds of things all the time," Rumsfeld said.

Democrats called the Bush administration's response tepid, and said it lends credence to the notion that the White House doesn't want to offend some of its most loyal supporters.

"It seems they are shuffling their feet when they should be running away from what Pat Robertson said," Democratic political consultant Steve McMahon said. "That this president, who projects himself as brave and bold, doesn't want to stand up to his own right wing is ironic."

Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said the U.S. response to the incident would be a test of its anti-terrorist policy.

"It's a huge hypocrisy to maintain this discourse against terrorism and at the same time, in the heart of that country, there are entirely terrorist statements like those," he said.

Rangel said Venezuela was considering legal action against Robertson.

The United States was believed in the past to have been involved in the 1963 assassination of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem and attempts to assassinate Castro.

President Gerald R. Ford put political assassination off-limits in an executive order in the mid-1970s.

Chavez has repeatedly accused the United States of backing a plan to assassinate him, which the U.S. has denied. Earlier this year he threatened to cut off oil exports to the United States if it supports any effort to overthrow him.

That is not an inconsequential threat when gas prices are brushing $3 a gallon. Venezuela exports 1.3 million barrels of oil a day to the United States — 8 percent of the total supply.