"Face the Nation" transcript: August 28, 2011
Below is a rush partial transcript of "Face the Nation" on August 28, 2011, hosted by CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer. The guest is former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And good morning again. General Powell is in the studio with us this morning. Good morning, General.
First, we're going to talk about the storm, no the hurricane is now Tropical Storm Irene but she is barreling into New York at this hour and there's still concern of flooding and high winds and our team of correspondents is deployed all along the path of the storm. We are beginning this morning though with the man we've been depending on since the beginning of this storm, meteorologist and CBS News hurricane consultant David Bernard in Miami. Well, Dave, just bring us up to speed where are we on this thing and what happens next.
DAVID BERNARD (CBS News Hurricane Consultant): All right. Good morning, Bob. This is the latest that we have from the National Hurricane Center, as you mentioned a tropical storm now--sixty-five miles hour per winds, generally right over New York City, moving north-northeast at twenty-six miles per hour. Now the heaviest rain has left the north of New York and Philadelphia, New England and also Upstate New York--that's where the heaviest rain is probably going to be for the rest of the day. And, in fact, that's where we're likely to see some more flooding problems. Some areas could still get an additional six inches rain between now and tomorrow morning, as the storm finally moves out to the Northeast. Now since midnight, we've had some wind gusts that were around sixty in New York City, also in Bridgeport, Connecticut; Baltimore, fifty-one; Montauk, forty. And so far in Boston, only a wind gust of around forty miles per hour. But look how big the wind field is right now. A lot of tropical storm force winds, Bob, are still going to be spreading across newly-- New England throughout the day, so the danger is not quite over yet.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay. Well, thank you very much, Dave. And we appreciate all the good work you've been doing our way. Thank you so much.
Byron Pitts is in Long Beach, New York, which is out on Long Island. Well, Byron, this has been downgraded to a tropical storm but it looks like you still got a pretty good breeze out there.
BYRON PITTS (CBS News 60 MINUTES Correspondent): Hey, Bob, that's absolutely right. We've had wind gust up north of fifty miles an hour this morning. We got our first taste of Irene at about six o'clock this morning and it's got steadily worst. This is actually bit of a wall now. We've had-- moments where there have been downpours. The-- the beach is over that way. There's this beautiful pristine beach about a hundred yards wide. It normally separates the-- the ocean from the boardwalk. Now that ocean has covered with water. One of the concerns here, Bob, is flooding because of storm surge. The Long Beach is only about three feet-- three feet above water. This, so far today, we've heard about a hundred and sixty thousand power outages along-- in-- along Long Island. In-- in Long Beach it hasn't been as bad. I've talked to the city manager who said they had a few trees down. Now you'll see this kind of debris on the ground scattered about, but nothing major. I saw a motorcycle turned over. We've seen our share of looky loos this morning. There's a guy over here who's on his bicycle riding around.
Hey, man.
MAN: What's up, brother.
BYRON PITTS: What's up? What brings you out on a day like this? Man, I'm not here because I have to be? Where are you headed?
MAN: Just going to check it out. Once in a lifetime chance to see that.
BYRON PITTS: Once in a lifetime chance to see this stuff. All right. Thank you so much. We've heard that kind of comments from a lot of the young people we've talked to out here today. In New York City, conditions are about the same at this hour. About forty thousand people in New York are without electricity. There's been a storm sturge-- storm surge in New York Harbor of about four feet. New York evacuated about a hundred thirty-seven thousand people in low-lying sections of Manhattan and the other Burroughs because concerns about flooding. And, Bob, that's the big worry at this point. As for folks on the street, people are-- most probably looking around, seeing what they can see. In New York, we saw people playing slip aside. This point it hasn't been as bad as predicted. But again, the big concern for the rest of the day will be flooding.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay. Well, Byron, thank you very much and-- and if you just do one thing, stay on foot. I don't think it is quite time to get on the bike, yeah, but thanks a lot, Byron.
BYRON PITTS: All right, thanks.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. CBS's national correspondent Chip Reid is in Ocean City, Maryland, this morning. We're trying-- going on the path the storm backwards. He's not bicycle this morning. Chip, what's the latest down there?
CHIP REID (CBS News National Correspondent): Well, Bob I tell you yesterday when we looked south, we thought we saw doom coming in the direction of Ocean City, Maryland. We looked down there and you can see little slivers of blue sky. In fact, this city has already been (AUDIO CUT) and at noon it is supposed to open up to tourists and vacationers. They want the people back, two hundred thousand people went over the bridges from this narrow Barrier Island over recent days and now they want them back as quickly as they can get them back here. A lot of people, a lot of business owners around here are very irked that they were sent away in the first place because they are now saying, well, I told you so, this wasn't going to be a big storm, but the mayor vigorously defends his decision, he says if there had been huge numbers of people here with the strong winds, it certainly would have been a much more dangerous situation. The mayor's bottom line is he says they didn't just dodge a bullet, they dodged a missile. Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: I'm kind of with a mayor around that. Thank you very much, Chip. CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann is on the outer banks of North Carolina, of course, that's where act one of all those began when the-- when the storm made its first landfall there. So, I take it things are looking a little better down there this morning too right, Mark.
MARK STRASSMANN (CBS News Transportation Correspondent): Right, Bob. Much better in fact, Irene is just not the knock out punch that may people even here had been afraid of. These barrier islands actually have come out of this pretty well proving once again they can take a punch. Impressively so when you consider how ferociously and ominously Irene first came at shore with winds of-- of one hundred fifteen miles per hour, the storm shoring here for about twelve hours, I was still hearing it last night in my room and the storm system also dropped about seven inches of rain here, which is why flooding along the rain, the storm surged, the flooding is now the big issue, of course, on the west side of these Barrier Islands. There is some flooding and there is some damage. A lot of folks today woke up to discover they have a major cleanup ahead of them. In some cases, they have a basement pump out but all in all they really feel okay about this, in fact, Bob, if the west of the East Coast comes out of this as well as these Barrier Islands did, they should consider themselves lucky.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, that is just amazing. Well, thank you-- thank you so much, Mark. CBS News will present a one-hour special anchored by Scott Pelley just after the conclusion of FACE THE NATION today. And now I want to turn from what is happening and the storm and what was supposed to happen and that is the dedication of the memorial honoring the late Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. Tens of thousands of people were expected to turn out here in Washington, to honor Doctor King on this, the 48th anniversary of his "I Have a Dream" speech. General Colin Powell was instrumental in getting that memorial built and he is with us this morning to talk about that and some other things too. General Powell, welcome.
General, you were very instrumental in getting this memorial built and done, I think you raised yourself over a million dollars for this.
GENERAL COLIN POWELL (Former Secretary of State): I was pleased to serve on the leadership committee, many people contributed and my contribution was relatively modest compared to what others did, but it was important memorial to build.
BOB SCHIEFFER: I wanted to ask you this more personal question, what did Martin Luther King, Jr., mean to you?
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: He meant a great deal to me. You know, when he gave that same speech, I was serving in Vietnam. When he was killed several years later, I was training to go back to Vietnam. Most of that period, I was away from the country, my wife and young children were in Birmingham, Alabama during those terrible days in 1963 and what Doctor King meant to me was that the second revolution, the second Civil War is under way. It was time now to meet dreams set out for us by our founding fathers. And what Doctor King did was not just free African-Americans, he freed all of America, he caused us through his sacrifice and his service. He caused America to look at a mirror of itself. Look in that mirror, what do you see? Is this who you want to be? Is this the inspiration you want to be to the rest of the world? And the answer was no and we knew he had a change and he was the leader to took us through that change and that's why it's so fitting that he be memorialized in this manner.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you feel that his dream has now been realized?
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: No, if Doctor King was here now, he would be raging about poverty, he would be raging about inequality as in our society, he would be raging about the fact that we are not educating all of youngsters and especially our African-American youngsters. He'd also be chewing them out a bit, you know, you got to work harder to get your education. We have to bring back intact families, so we can raise children in loving intact families and he would also be on the world stage talking about poverty and inequality throughout the world. He was a-- he was a man who transcended the African-American experience, he became an American icon and he became an icon to the rest of the world.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Doctor King and his era it was a tough time for America, but we are going towards some more tough times right now. What do you think he would think of today's politics?
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: He would be very disappointed, I mean, we have such a lack of civility in our political life now. We-- we are fixed on ideological poles and we seem unable to come together and Doctor King was always saying, can we come together; can we talk about these issues? Founding fathers argued with each other, but they also knew that argument was part of a democratic process, but ultimately you have to compromise with each other in order to reach a consensus to keep the country moving forward and if all we do is remain fixed on these poles of opposites of political spectrum, the country will not be moving forward and we have got to find the way to get through this and it's going to happen when the American people say knock it off or stop it and we want to see a different attitude with respect to a political life. We want to see a different level of civility in Washington, DC.
BOB SCHIEFFER: General, we are going to take a break here and when we come back, I want to get your reaction to this explosive book by former Vice President Dick Cheney. You had some rather surprising remarks about-- among other people, you. We will talk about that and some more things when we come back.
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING: One day-- one day
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BOB SCHIEFFER: And we're back now with former Secretary of State Colin Powell and we want to talk about politics and talk a little about this book that Dick Cheney himself said is going to cause heads all over Washington to explode I guess I'd ask you, General, is your head exploding?
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: My head isn't exploding and I haven't noticed any other head is exploding in Washington, DC, and the explosive part of the book. And when Mister Cheney says its explosive but what I have read in the newspapers and seen on television, it's essentially a rehash of the events of seven or eight years ago. What really sort of got my attention was this way in which he characterized it, it's going to cause heads to explode. That's quite a visual and in fact, the kind of headline I would expect to come out a gossip column, that's the kind of headline you might see one of the super market tabloids write. It was not the kind of headline I would have expected to come from a former Vice President of the United States of America. Mister Cheney had a long and distinguished career and I opened his book that's what he would focus on, not these cheap shots that he's taking at me and other members of the administration who served to the best of our ability for President Bush.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So you-- you just label them flatly cheap shots?
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: Well yeah, they're cheap shots. I mean, several one he-- he tosses at me, you know, he takes a great credit for my resignation in 2004. Well, President Bush and I had always agreed that I would leave at the end of 2004. After the election, I stayed on three more months because I-- I wanted to and because there were conferences that I wanted to attend and because Doctor Rice hadn't been confirmed. So it's no news there. He says that I went out of my way not to present my positions to the President but to take them outside of the administration. That's nonsense. The President knows and I had told him what I thought about every issue of the day. Mister Cheney may forget that I'm the one who said to President Bush if you break it, you own it. And you've got to understand that if we have to go to war in Iraq, we've to be prepared for the whole war not just the first phase. And Mister Cheney and many of his colleagues were not prepared for what happened after the fall of Baghdad. And I persuaded the President to take the case to the United Nations to see if we can be solved without war. And if it couldn't be solved without war, we would have people aligned with us. Mister Cheney went out immediately after the President made that decision and undercut it by giving two speeches to veterans groups that essentially said he didn't believe it would work. It's not the way you support a President. And he also says that, you know that I was not supportive of the President's position. Well, who went to the United Nations and regrettably with a lot of false information, it was me, it wasn't Mister Cheney. I supported the President. I supported the President's decisions. I gave the President my best advice. Then he goes on to talk about the Valerie Plame affair, and tries to lay it all off on Mister Rich Armitage in the State Department and me. But the fact of the matter is when Mister Armitage realized that he was the source for Bob Novak's column that caused all the difficulty and he called me immediately, two days after the President launched the investigation and what we did was we called the Justice Department. They sent it over the FBI the FBI had all the information that Mister Armitage's participation in this immediately. And we called Al Gonzalez, the President's counsel, and told him that we had information. The FBI asked us not to share any of this with anyone else as did Mister Gonzalez. And so, if the White House operatives had come forward as readily as Mister Armitage had done then we wouldn't have gone on for two more months with the FBI trying to find out what happened in the White House. There wouldn't have been special counsel appointed by the Justice Department who spent two years trying to get to the bottom of it. And we wouldn't have the mess that we subsequently had. And so if the White House and the operatives in the White House and Mister Cheney's staff and elsewhere in the White House had been as forthcoming with the FBI as Mister Armitage was, this problem would not have reached the dimensions that it reached. But Mister Cheney is free to say what he wishes but so far I haven't seen anything in it that is as explosive as he claims it is. And I don't see heads laying on the street.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, did you think, I mean--it was no secret that you often disagreed with the vice president as there are always disagreements within any administration.
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: Of course, there are always disagreements. And I think what Mister Cheney should let us see is the nature of the disagreements and he should say why he disagreed with me. And he should at least indicate why I was disagreeing with him. And not just dismiss it with a wave of his hand a barb that is intended to cause heads to explode rather than illuminate the issue.
BOB SCHIEFFER: I just want to put up on the screen that one quote because you referred to it. This is the quote, one of the quotes in the book and he says flatly talking about you, "It was as though he thought the proper way to express his views was by criticizing administration policy to people outside the government."
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: Did he indicate anything in that paragraph or in that section about what I did. I gave my best advice to him, to my colleagues in the National Security Council and above all to the President of the United States of America. And he can't dismiss all of that with that kind of observation.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, what do you think happened here, I mean, clearly you had disagreements but this seems reading this book, this seems well beyond disagreement. It seems to be anger here.
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: Well, I'm not going to tribute any emotion to Mister Cheney on writing this book but it was clear by 2004 that the-- the team is not functioning as a team. And we had different views and not just views-- not views that could be reconciled. And so I said to the President that there was-- I would be leaving at the end of the year after the election he had to take a look at his whole team to try to resolve these issues because it was not a smoothly functioning team at that point. And I-- I think that's unfortunate but its reality and I felt that I had to leave the administration. And frankly, I was intended to just serve one term.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Did-- did the conversations, I mean, the atmosphere within the White House while you were there, how would you characterize it? I mean, obviously there were disagreements but was it-- was it-- were these angry disagreements because I know, he in some ways no kinder to your successor Condoleezza Rice than he was to you.
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: Well he's taken the same shots at Condi, with an almost condescending tone. She tearfully did this, or that. And he's taken the same shots at George Tenet. And he has also, in some ways, indicated he didn't always approve of what President Bush was deciding. And there's nothing wrong with saying you disagree. But it's not necessary to take these kind of barbs and then try to pump a book up by saying heads will be exploding. That's even on the headline section of the Nixon Foundation to sell the book. I think it's a bit too far. I think, Dick overshot the runway with that kind of comment, if that's how he plans to sell his book. He's had a long and distinguished life and career, and I hope that's what the book focuses on, not these kinds of things.
SCHIEFFER: Well, I mean-- was it that kind of atmosphere while this administration was under way?
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: We had-- did we have heated arguments? Sure. Did we have heated debates? Yes. But it was mostly civil, and everybody tends to focus on Iraq and Afghanistan. But there's so many other things that were going--the President's emergency plan on AIDS relief, the matter in which we increased funding for Africa and other parts of the world. We got a lot done in the administration, a lot of things that we can be proud of and that were successful. We also got rid of a horrible regime called the Taliban and a horrible dictator by the name of Saddam Hussein.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you a little bit about politics. You voted for Barack Obama last time out, even though you are a Republican. Are you going to vote for him again?
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: Well, I haven't decided who I'm going to vote for. Just as was the case in 2008, I am going to watch the campaign unfold. In the course of my life, I have voted for Democrats and I have voted for Republicans, I have changed from one four-year cycle to another. And I've always felt it my responsibility as a citizen to take a look at the issues, to examine the candidates, and pick the person that I think is best qualified for the office of the President in that year. And not just solely on the basis of party affiliation.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Anybody on the Republican side that has leaped up that you see as--
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: I think there are some interesting candidates, but I don't think any one of them has really emerged into the leading position, and if you-- if you follow the press and the polls, every three days it's another leader on the Republican side. So let's see if anybody else is going to join, and we've got a long way to go.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. General Powell, it's always a pleasure to have you.
GENERAL COLIN POWELL: Thank you, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Thank you so much for being with us today. I'll be back with a final thought.
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BOB SCHIEFFER: Finally today, it was to have been a wonderful day in Washington, where people from all over the country to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the anniversary of his "I Have a Dream" speech. But that was all blown away, canceled as the hurricane roared through, reminding us that for all ingenuity we still cannot control the power and the force of nature. So the massive statue stood alone in the storm to be dedicated and celebrated another day. And the organizer of the event called postponing the dedication heartbreaking and while disappointing to so many who had worked so hard, those celebrations were really necessary. As Lincoln said of Gettysburg, those who died there, consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. King's great work requires no ceremony or validation. It is celebrated every time an American child is born to enjoy and take for granted a freedom so wrongly once denied. The storm will pass and the King Memorial will take its place among the great monuments of Washington which are after all the index of our nation's values--those we honor, remind us and tell others who we are and what we hold to be important. But the monuments are only reminders, each of us builds our own memorial by the work we do and the life we lead. The storm reminded us of the power of nature but King's work showed that the power of the human spirit is even greater.
Back in a minute.
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BOB SCHIEFFER: That's it for us. Stay tuned to CBS News for the latest on Hurricane Irene. We will see you right here next week.
ANNOUNCER: This broadcast was produced by CBS News which is solely responsible for the selection of today's guests and topics. It originated in Washington, DC.