Guest: Karen Hanretty, Roy Beck, David Pollak, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Dave Adams, Harry Edwards, Buzz Bissinger, Shmuley Boteach, Drew Pinsky
PAT BUCHANAN, GUEST HOST: Tonight in SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY, the latest trend in terrorism, female suicide bombers. Are they the next generation and are women who kill in the name of God already taking lives in America?
Then, professional athletes grab headlines by brawling with fans and doping up to enhance their performance. Any wonder high school students are imitating the pros? What does this say about America and what does it mean for the future of high school sports?
And conservative columnist Tony Blankley, the editorial editor of “The Washington Times,” says Hillary Rodham Clinton has begun to sound, catch this, Buchananesque. Is Hillary’s new hard line against the invasion from Mexico and the hiring of illegal aliens her opening bid to succeed George W. Bush?
ANNOUNCER: From the press room, to the courtroom, to the halls of Congress, Joe Scarborough has seen it all. Welcome to SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY.
BUCHANAN: Welcome to SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY. I’m Pat Buchanan, sitting in for Joe.
Our top story tonight, dying to kill and killing for God. Are women the new face of terror? And why are more and more women killing in the name of God? The past few years have witnessed a flood of new suicide bombings, most recent in Chechnya, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iraq, many of them committed by women.
Here in the USA, Andrea Yates said Satan told her to drown her five children. Deanna Laney said the lord sent her signs to beat her three sons to death with stones. Now Deena Slosser (ph), the day before her baby’s arms were cut off, told her husband she wanted to give her children to God. Is fanatic faith driving these women to kill or is something else going on here.
Joining me now Dr. Drew Pinsky, author of “Cracked: Putting Broken Lives Back Together Again,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of “Face Your Fears.”
Let me talk to you first, Dr. Pinsky.
What is your read on why we have seen the sudden occurrence of female suicide bombers in Palestine and in Iraq? It is not a new phenomenon. If you go back in history, a woman was the one behind the organized assassination of the czar liberator Alexander II. A woman shot Lennon twice. Two women tried to kill Gerald Ford. What is the reason behind this?
DR. DREW PINSKY, AUTHOR, “CRACKED”: Well, women are quite capable of
violence, just the way men are. We wouldn’t think that somehow women are -
· that they’ve been called somehow throughout history as somehow the weaker sex. They’re really in fact are not and they’re quite capable of violence.
But the story I think you guys are talking about are two completely separate things. One, you showed three cases of women with major psychiatric disorders, with delusions. It’s very common for people with thought disturbances, with delusions, to believe they’re receiving thoughts from God, that the devil’s coming to get them, that they are God or they are Jesus. These are part of the—expression of an abnormal biology, as opposed to religion fanaticism.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: Let me interrupt you right there.
Now, you say it is psychological problems and I guess to be dealt with by a psychiatrist. Do you hold that there’s no such thing as demonic possession or that these women could have taken religious dogmas just too far and gone over the other side?
PINSKY: All I know, Pat, is I have seen hundreds of perhaps thousands of similar cases. And, magically, those thoughts go away with a certain medication completely. And they don’t come back until they stop their medicines. If they stop their medicines, the thoughts come back.
So, just as an empiricist, I happen to believe that there’s something in there biologically. So, yes, I just very much put a lot on my medical training and the faith in the empiric reality that I see over and over again.
BUCHANAN: All right, Rabbi Boteach, I think Dr. Pinsky is right. We ought to separate the two, these women who have killed their children supposedly because they are under orders from Satan or God or something like that, and the suicide bombers who are part of a pattern of suicide bombers. They simply happen to be female.
Now, are you one who believes the problem, the first problem, these women that are killing in the sense that Satan has told them to do it, do you think that’s simply a psychological problem or a moral problem?
RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH, AUTHOR, “FACE YOUR FEAR”: Well, no. I personally think that’s a psychological problem.
But I have to tell you, the advent of the suicide bomber in the Islamic world, Pat, is the most monstrous evil ever known to man. Even the Nazis did not train women to kill Allied soldiers. Even the Ku Klux Klan didn’t send Southern belles into black churches to blow up black children.
What we’re seeing here is the conscious subversion of the maternal and nurturing instinct, which is congenital within women. I couldn’t disagree more with my friend and colleague Dr. Drew Pinsky. Women are not the fairer sex. They’re the superior sex. There’s a natural nobility of character. There is a check and balance system that God set up in nature where women actually check the aggression of men.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: All right, well, Dr. Boteach—excuse me—Rabbi Boteach, there is a—the kamikazes took the lives of American sailors. In Israel, in Masada, one of the most famous events in Israeli history in olden times, 900 men were besieged by the Romans and they executed all their women and children and killed themselves, rather than be taken alive.
As I mentioned, in the czar’s Russia, women were responsible for the suicide bombings that took the life of the czar. So these things are not new.
BOTEACH: Pat, I couldn’t disagree more. There are always individual exceptions that prove the rule. Women have murdered.
Just like in the United States, 3 percent of violent crime is perpetrated by women. But 97 percent are men. I’m talking about a religion that is now seeking, not all, of course, but to consciously subvert the nurturing feminine instinct within women that actually teaches men to be less aggressive.
(CROSSTALK)
BOTEACH: What do we do with a society when men are blowing themselves up and the mothers are actually praising them, saying, I hope the rest of my kids do this?
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: Exactly.
Dr. Pinsky, now we’re on the suicide bombers over there. The first of the Palestinian suicide bombers, I believe her name was Wafa Idris. And I believe she was a woman I think who did not have children. She was divorced and in effect dishonored because she did not—she did humanitarian work.
PINSKY: Right.
BUCHANAN: She was dealing with the carnage from the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. And she was the first woman to put a string of bombs around herself and go in and blow up innocent people, not just soldiers, but innocent civilians. Is there any moral difference or psychological difference between that and a man who does the same thing?
PINSKY: Well, I actually agree with Dr. Shmuley, that, while I’m saying that women are capable of aggression and violence, he’s absolutely right. Statistically, they’re much less to do so. Biologically, they’re not wired as prone to aggression and violence, but they are quite capable of it.
And the thing that tends to bring it out in women is when they themselves are brutalized by men or their society. And if you look at these women that become suicide bombers, the literature I’ve seen on them, they are ostracized by their culture for some reason. They have been brutalized by men. They’ve been and dismissed by people for various reasons, whether they had an affair or they were infertile or things that were relatively minor transgressions, they were dealt with in brutal fashion.
And, of course, that brutality seems to be recapitulated by the Israelis. And the Israelis become a scapegoat for their aggression and anger. But the fact is, there’s other sources of brutally before they begin acting it out on the public.
BUCHANAN: All right, but wait a minute. But that seems to me is not exceptional. You go into a prison full of men, you will find in there most of them come from what we used to call broken families. Many of them were abused as children or neglected.
PINSKY: Yes.
BUCHANAN: And so they, too, they do the same things in life that were done to them as children. That’s all you’re saying about the women that behave this way.
PINSKY: Well, I’m saying that, to get women to be that aggressive, they have to be truly brutalized.
And what I’m trying to get away from is the idea that it’s somehow purely the religion, purely the fanaticism and purely the Israelis. It’s a combination of all these forces coming together that is causing them to act out in what, I agree with what Dr. Shmuley is saying, a very, very unnatural and rather astonishing way.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: Rabbi, let me go to you, because I wrote a chapter on terrorism in my book. And I was very impressed with the origin it in the People’s Will, the Narodniki, in Russia, who were originally sort of idealistic romantics.
And then they took up revolution and terror because they thought that was the only weapon that could change society. And the woman who led this was a very young noble woman. She wasn’t abused or anything. And she led the assassination of the czar liberator, who was an honorable figure. They didn’t hate him. They wanted to change society.
Isn’t there a possibility that these women are in their own lights true heroines and martyrs for a belief, even if we look at it from another point of view?
BOTEACH: There’s a very big difference between someone that kills a
czar, who is an oppressor—and most czars were actually evil and brutal -
· vs. suicide female Islamic bombers that are blowing up other pregnant women, blowing up children. You cannot compare the two.
There’s nothing idealistic about it. And, Pat, I have to take strong issue with what you suggested, that it may be due to the Israelis’ brutal occupation. Give me a break. The fact is that the Tibetans have been under Chinese military occupation for 50 years. I don’t see female monks blowing themselves up and blowing up the Chinese.
The fact is, the Japanese were military occupation, American military occupation, for nine years. They didn’t blow up G.I.s. For God’s sake, we dare never excuse the female suicide bomber. This is a culture of hatred that is just insidious. It’s poisonous and it’s toxic. And I have got to tell you...
BUCHANAN: But wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Let me ask you, Rabbi Boteach, look, there have been terrorists in every war of national liberation since World War II.
BOTEACH: Women? Women?
BUCHANAN: Whether it’s Zionists in Algiers and places like that, women who did bombings. I don’t know if they killed themselves, but they went into movie theaters. They dressed up fashionably. They went into restaurants and they walked out and blew the place up, killing innocent people. That’s been done.
BOTEACH: Pat, in the Second World War, female partisans in Italy killed S.S. soldiers, but they didn’t kill civilians. Women are not trained to kill other women. And what this is doing...
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: All right, let me ask you, do you believe in women in combat?
BOTEACH: I do not, because I think that it is not only chivalrous, but I think it’s actually instinctual and healthy for men to want to protect women.
BUCHANAN: I think you’re dead right there, Rabbi, dead right.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: For one time, Rabbi, this is merry Christmas, Rabbi, merry Christmas. You’re dead right on that one.
BOTEACH: God bless you, Pat.
BUCHANAN: Dr. Drew, Rabbi Shmuley, thanks for joining us.
PINSKY: Thank you, Pat.
BUCHANAN: Coming up, millions of Americans board flights to be with loved ones this Christmas. We’ll ask a federal air marshal if you’re any safer on the planes.
Be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BUCHANAN: If you think fist-fighting athletes hopped up on steroids set a bad example for our kids, you belong in SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY.
That’s up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BUCHANAN: The pressure to win at all costs is creating a crisis in sports, fans out of control, players on steroids and an almost fanatic desire for fame and fortune.
If this sounds like the NFL or the NBA, guess again. We’re talking about high school kids, coaches and parents.
Joining me to talk about the degeneration of sports at the high school level are Buzz Bissinger, author of “Friday Night Lights,” Dr. Harry Edwards, sports sociologist and consultant to the San Francisco 49ers, and Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, former linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys and author of “Out of Control.”
Buzz Bissinger, let me start with you.
BUZZ BISSINGER, AUTHOR, “FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS”: Sure.
BUCHANAN: Is there anything wrong with these small towns down there in Texas waiting for Friday night in the fall to watch the hometown football team play the next town over and have that as just a community celebration and the enormous focus there is on it? What is wrong with that?
BISSINGER: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it as long as it IS kept in perspective.
What’s wrong is, is that when you have a place like Odessa that in 1988 -- actually, the early ‘80s—built a high school football stadium for $5.6 million. What’s wrong with it is when you have terribly educational priorities in which more money is spent on athletic tape than on books for the English department.
What is wrong with it is when you have an actual kid getting paid to play football as a junior. He’s getting paid $100, $200, $300 a week. When you’re getting paid, you’re not going to care about an education. And that actual kid, whose name is Booby Miles, he can’t hold a job. His wife is in prison.
His life is a wreck. I agree, Pat. It is exquisite on a Friday night if it’s in perspective, but we have lost all perspective.
BUCHANAN: All right, Dr. Harry Edwards, is that right?
DR. HARRY EDWARDS, SPORTS SOCIOLOGIST: Well, I think it’s correct.
I think that the pressure on these kids coming from parents, from coming from communities, coming from schools, is simply phenomenal. And the win at all costs kind of attitude has drifted down to the high school and even the junior high school level.
But let me say something that I think is an even more tragic mine field that this society is going to have to wake up to. It’s not just the athletes. The athletes are really just the canaries in the mine field telling us what is happening in the youth culture. You have kids who couldn’t carry a tune or a football in a basket who are using substances to help build themselves up muscularly and otherwise because they want to look like the hip-hop and athlete heroes.
And in the suburbs, it’s rampant, steroids, other kinds of substances.
This is where the real bombshell is going to hit.
BUCHANAN: All right, Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson. I don’t doubt you were a high school star yourself, with the Dallas Cowboys. How has it changed since you were a young athlete in high school and has it gotten really bad? And can we talk about to how we change—or how do you change a culture when everybody is involved in it, the kids and the parents and the coaches and the schools and the town?
THOMAS “HOLLYWOOD” HENDERSON, FORMER NFL PLAYER: Well, the game of football when I played it was fun. And when I was a young boy, when I played high school football, it was fun. Then, when I got to college, it was fun. When I got to the National Football League, it was something different.
But I want to say this about the kids out there. One-tenth of 1 percent of these kids are going to be professional athletes. And so if they are using growth hormones or steroids or other substances and end up working at McDonald’s because they are not going to get into professional sports, I think the precedent it sets is that they’re going to become chemically dependent, alcoholic and they’re going to have social problems, because they’re going to think putting something in their body or in their mouth is going to make things OK.
BUCHANAN: All right, Buzz Bissinger, you wrote the book and did the research on this story primarily in Texas.
BISSINGER: Right.
BUCHANAN: Let’s take a look at a clip from a trailer for “Friday Night Lights.”
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, “FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS”)
BILLY BOB THORNTON, ACTOR: Gentlemen, the hopes and dreams of an entire town are riding on your shoulders. You may never matter more than you do right now. It’s time.
We’re in the business of winning.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BUCHANAN: Buzz, is there anything wrong with that message?
BISSINGER: As I say, there’s nothing wrong with that message, but the message is interesting. It’s interesting that a high school coach talks about it not—as Hollywood says, not as being fun, but the business of winning. And that’s what they said all the time. You’re going on a business trip when you go out of town. It’s not about fun.
The pressure on these kids is enormous. When you have 20,000 people that you’re playing in front of on a Friday night, it’s exciting, but the pressure, the need to win—parents are living vicariously through kids. And now, 14 years later, after I wrote the book, you look at Valdosta, Georgia, $7.5 million to renovate a stadium. North Hills High School in Pittsburgh, $10 million.
BUCHANAN: But, you know—but this gets back to my question, Dr. Edwards. This is a culture. People love it. The people down there in Texas love that sport. The kids want to succeed. They’re working as hard as they can. They want the approbation, the notoriety, the fame that comes from it. They want to get into college.
How do you change it if you have got a whole culture that everybody’s involved in, everybody seems to be enjoying? Maybe it’s a little excessive. How do you change something like that?
EDWARDS: Well, and you’ve got to recognize first that it’s not just athletics, as I tried to indicate.
We live in a supplement, a performance-enhancement culture more generally, whether you’re looking at implants to improve the physique or whether you’re looking at Viagra or Levitra. We live in a society which puts that kind of an emphasis on performance enhancement. And everybody just kind of goes along with it if they value the goals similarly.
But I think that ultimately we have to look at what we’re doing as a culture, far beyond the realm of athletics, because athletics simply reflects what’s going on in society more generally as far as where our values are.
BUCHANAN: All right, Dr. Edwards, I think you’re exactly right. And what you’re talking about basically is cheating if necessary to get ahead, whether it’s steroids and things like that in baseball or cheating in school or cutting corners.
But, again, Hollywood Henderson, you can’t go home again. I remember when I was growing up, we played in a basketball team. And, of course, in the high school, it was all the guys there. And there was no separation from students and players. Even at Georgetown University, I knew the players on the team. They were all from the local high school. The boarders were from New York Catholic schools, New Jersey. They were all part of the student body.
Now you get into college, they’re pros. They eat at separate tables. They have separate classes and they get money and gifts. But this is an entire culture. And it’s going all the way down to where you get to little leaguers. They’re putting 14-year-old ringers in there to pitch against 12-year-olds to win championships.
HENDERSON: Well, in Austin, Texas, I have a football stadium that I built for kids. And we host Pop Warner football games. And every year, we have to shut down the stadium because a parent has come out of the stands to jump on an official because of a call that may have caused a loss.
I’m going to tell you, I love the game of football and I play it with all my heart. I won a Super Bowl, but I lost two. I had fun doing it all. And I think—and what’s going on now in sports with growth hormones and steroids, I think it’s setting up our youth, athletes, for substance abuse, alcoholism, obsessions and really trouble in their future lives. And I think that’s where it’s going.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: All right, Hollywood, tell me, is the NFL now a far different place than when you were playing back there in those days? And, again, I’m trying to get the idea. How do we change it? How do we do something about it other than just talking about it?
HENDERSON: Well, there’s just too much pressure to perform in the National Football League. I had many needless stuck in my shoulders and ankles and hips so I could play because that guy behind me was sitting there watching me to see if I could play. And coaches would come up before me before a game. I’m hurt. I can’t even walk in the stadium, but I got to take an injection of cortisone and novocaine in part of my body because a coach looks at me and says, can you go?
And you understand what that means in the National Football League. So I have to tell you, I had fun playing in high school. I had fun playing in college. But when it became a business for me, I lost the love for the game.
BUCHANAN: All right, Buzz (UNINTELLIGIBLE), what Hollywood is saying is, this sounds like Nick Nolte in “North Dallas Forty.”
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: It’s going to down to high school games.
BISSINGER: But it’s also true in high school.
At Permian High School, there were kids who were routinely injected with painkillers so they could play in the state playoffs. I mean, one of them was Britt Hager, who actually ended up having a pro career. He got injected with novocaine into his hip during halftime of every game.
The problem is, is, Pat, it may be part of the culture, but there are things in the culture that may not be good for the culture. I see high school sports and sports following the same parallel as corporate America, anything in the name of winning, anything as long as it increases profits. So, it can be steroids, Mayo Clinic; 11 percent of all kids in high school have taken steroids.
The worst offenders may be freshman girls, a minimum of 7 percent, gifts, shoe deals, coaches making over $100 grand. I think you can change it with legislation, with politicians. I think that high schools now need the equivalent of an NCAA, A national sanctioning body that makes it a level playing field, because, among things, it’s not a level playing field.
BUCHANAN: All right, Dr. Harry Edwards, a quick final word from you. Do we got to get the government into this, even down into high school sports?
EDWARDS: I don’t think that that is going to get it done.
I think that what is going to get it done is that the people who run these sports have to recognize that, ultimately, the very integrity of what they’re doing is on the line. And, as Hollywood said, it’s not just the illegal substances or the banned substances or the stealth drugs and the designer drugs. It’s the kind of things that they do to get guys back on the field, to get girls down to weight so that they can play in basketball or be in gymnastics.
All of this stuff has to be reevaluated by the athletic institution. Now, how that’s going to happen, I think that depends upon the leadership that you have in that institution.
BUCHANAN: OK, Dr. Harry Edwards, Buzz Bissinger, Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson, thanks for joining us.
Coming up next, what are the odds of you sitting next to a terrorist on a flight this Christmas season? We’ll ask a United States air marshal, how safe are our skies?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BUCHANAN: Are you actually safer on a flight if there’s no air marshal on board? You’ll be surprised by the answer. That’s next.
But, first, let’s get the latest headlines from the MSNBC News Desk.
(NEWS BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: From the press room, to the courtroom, to the halls of Congress, Joe Scarborough has seen it all. Welcome back to SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY.
BUCHANAN: After the attacks of September 11, the U.S. government began putting air marshals on random flights. However, rather than wear casual dress to blend in with other passengers, the marshals had to dress in suits and ties. Those who did not have been pulled from duty or reprimanded. Is our government clueless?
Joining me now to discuss this is Dave Adams from the U.S. Federal Air Marshals and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. He is an attorney with the Investigative Project.
Dave Adams, good to see you again, old friend.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVE ADAMS, FEDERAL AIR MARSHAL SERVICE: Yes, it is, Pat. Same here.
Dave, Daveed, was my Secret Service detail. We used to jog together back in ‘96, was it not?
ADAMS: Yes, it was.
BUCHANAN: OK.
Let me ask you about this, Dave. What is going on? It seems to me that the logical thing to do would be to have some marshals dress up as businessmen, others as professors or students or even hippies in order that nobody could identify who they were and especially the hijackers not know what they have got to deal with on the plane.
ADAMS: Well, Pat, all the media hype that has been out there has been misinformation.
Our policies are classified as sensitive security information, so we really can’t get into particulars. But it’s twofold why we did it. First, we want to give the federal air marshals flexibility to blend into their surroundings so they’re not unnoticed.
BUCHANAN: Right.
ADAMS: And, secondly, we want them to still act professionally and dress professionally, still to blend into their surroundings, in case an emergency occurs in flight.
And there’s nothing in your policies out there that is going to endanger our work force or the people we serve.
BUCHANAN: OK, do you think—look, we had a bomb today. I guess it was on a—it wasn’t a bomb. It was a fake bomb. They put it in, in New Jersey. They ran it through all the processors. It spotted the fake bomb.
They had it cold. Only, they put the fake bomb on a plane to Amsterdam. Are American flights safe?
DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS, THE INVESTIGATIVE PROJECT: Well, American flights I can say are safer than they were before September 11.
I think that clued us into a lot of the problems that were going on. One thing I can speak to, though, is the need for a lack of rigid bureaucratization. We need to have law enforcement officers out there who are able to take their own initiative. And the government right now is hampered by a lot of policies that aren’t necessarily the most intelligent policies we could have.
BUCHANAN: Such as?
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: For example, when a congressman with a metal hip is coming through a metal detector, taking him aside and strip-searching him or strip-searching an 80-year-old woman in a wheelchair, a lot of times, our policies aren’t the most intelligent ones, so we end up squandering resources and we end up...
BUCHANAN: You think we ought to do a little more racial, ethnic profiling?
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Well, I would not speak necessarily to racial and ethnic profiling. But what I can say is that there are instances in which you can determine that somebody isn’t a threat.
BUCHANAN: Right.
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: There’s a difference between saying that racial and ethnic profiling is something that we necessarily have to do.
BUCHANAN: Look, I’ve been called out and body searched and they know me by name and they know my wife’s name and she goes through the same thing, too, the pat-down.
Let me ask you this, Dave, though. In a piece written by Michelle Malkin, if we can roll prompter here for a second—I guess we don’t—
OK.
An air marshal for from the Las Vegas officer says if passengers can identify the marshals, doesn’t that compromise their mission? Here’s the quote: “Under the current policies, airline passengers are actually safer flying on aircraft that do not have air marshals on them. If all the passengers know we are carrying the guns on the plane, then so do the terrorists. We just don’t want to get our throats cut.”
Now, what they seem to be saying, Dave, is, look, we have got to go undercover. Like, if you’re going to make a drug bust in Anacostia, you don’t go over there in a suit and tie and, you know, the floor shined shoes and the whole bit. And can you tell us that we have people that are on those planes that passengers, as well as terrorists, would not, in a second, be able to identify as air marshals?
ADAMS: Yes, I can, Pat.
We have actually had federal air marshals on flights in conversation with passengers on the flight saying that they didn’t even know if there is such a thing as a federal air marshal program, when in fact they are actually talking to a federal air marshal.
BUCHANAN: Right.
ADAMS: Our people blend in. That’s part of the training, about blending in.
But, really, what is hurting us, Pat, is the few among us, the small minority of the federal air marshals and special interest groups that are propagating misinformation to the media.
Is Michelle Malkin wrong in what she just...
ADAMS: She’s totally wrong. I have tried to reach out to her to talk to her about the misinformation she wrote in the article. And I have not heard from her.
BUCHANAN: What about this fellow Quinn, who is apparently—they had about 30 of these air marshals come in to Reagan Airport, was it? And he went bananas because they were dressed so slovenly. And so what is going on? You guys are going to lose your jobs? Get the coats and ties out there?
ADAMS: That is misinformation.
That information was put out by Audrey Hudson in “The Washington Times.” Director Quinn, yes, he was at the airport on Thanksgiving thanking the dedicated men and women who are flying the skies every day for doing an outstanding job. There was a very small minority of our FAMs that weren’t dressed appropriately that we felt that presented a professional image.
But it’s not a massive, yes, we’re going to take disciplinary action against these people. They just need to start following policies and present a professional image.
BUCHANAN: OK.
Since, we have had 9/11, we have not had a single hijacking. We’ve got—I guess we’ve got the reinforced doors up in the pilots cockpit. We have some pilots with guns in the cockpits. We’ve got marshals on some planes. We have got passengers who now know, after those planes went into the Pentagon, the Trade Center, look, if they hijack us, we’re not going to Havana. We’re going into a building, so we’re going to have to fight.
Has this, do you think, deterred hijackings? Are we in pretty good shape? And should we expect the next terrorist hit to be something different?
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Personal, I would expect the next terrorist hit to be something different, because I do think that planes are more safe.
You can’t say it with 100 percent certainty. But I think that two things are the case. No. 1, I think al Qaeda is looking for a much bigger hit than they got last time around.
BUCHANAN: What do you think they’re looking for?
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Well, I think they’re looking for a hit with weapons of mass destruction. Don’t know if they’re going to get that. Don’t know if they have the capacity to do that, but I think that’s absolutely what they’re looking for.
BUCHANAN: Probably chemical weapons. They don’t have nuclear now, unless they have nuclear...
(CROSSTALK)
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: From what I know, I don’t think they have nuclear. I think that chemical or biological is far more likely. But I think another thing is that there might be more of a tendency to look for soft target or to look for areas in which are not as well protected.
BUCHANAN: Dave, are you both—you were in the Secret Service. Are you both surprised we haven’t been hit at all, not even a Madrid bombing, not even a mall bombing, like they do in Israel, or a series of them at the same time? It seems to me that is so possible, almost probable. I’ve been astonished that we haven’t had it for three years.
ADAMS: Well, I think the Department of Homeland Security is doing an outstanding job. Agencies are working together now, better than they did after 9/11, Pat. And it’s intelligence sharing. We’re joined and we’re working together sharing this information.
BUCHANAN: And we have rolled up a lot of these groups, haven’t we?
ADAMS: We have.
BUCHANAN: Or these cells, at least, yes.
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Personally, I’ve been absolutely surprised, though, that there hasn’t been another attack.
BUCHANAN: I really have.
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Because, with an open society such as ours, it’s very difficult to ensure against all the various kinds of ways that they could hit us.
BUCHANAN: It’s unstoppable, yes.
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: For example, Amtrak. I ride Amtrak all the time.
BUCHANAN: Right.
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: You don’t go through metal detectors. You just get on to a train. And everyone knows that it’s a very ready target.
BUCHANAN: Right.
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: I think one of the things that may be preventing terrorists or may have prevented them in the past few years is that they are looking for a bigger hit. If you come and you kill 3,000 people, knock down the World Trade Center, and the next thing you do is blow up a pizzeria, people will be like, yes, well, al Qaeda really jumped the shark there.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: We’ve got them whipped. Yes. Yes.
OK, Dave and Daveed, thanks very much for joining us.
Coming up, Hillary Clinton makes a quick move to the right. Will it help? Can anything help Hillary in the red states? That debate is next. Don’t go away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi. This is Sergeant Donnell Hall (ph) with the 1st Service Support Group in Camp Taqaddum, Iraq.
I would like to say hi to my family in Mobile, Alabama. And I would like to wish them a safe and happy holidays. I love you and I miss you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BUCHANAN: Has New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton just made her opening bid for the Democratic nomination in 2008 by moving to the right with a fierce denunciation of illegal immigration that has at least one notable conservative shouting—quote—“God bless Hillary”?
Joining me now, Dave Pollak of Democratic Leadership For the 21st Century and Roy Beck of Numbers USA, a bipartisan immigration watchdog group, and Republican strategist Karen Hanretty. She’s the communications director for the California GOP.
Let me ask you, Dave Pollak, starting off. I think this is a very smart move. Is this a calculated move on Hillary Clinton’s part, standing up tough against illegal immigration? Frankly, I think if John Kerry had done it, he could have won Nevada or in Arizona and maybe New Mexico.
DAVID POLLAK, PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP FOR THE 21ST CENTURY:
Well, absolutely.
I think Hillary Clinton has always been very consistent on this. She’s been a strong supporter of legal immigration. But no one in the Democratic Party supports illegal immigration. And especially after 9/11, we have to take our borders very seriously.
BUCHANAN: All right, let me ask you, Roy Beck, are you going to sign her up for Numbers USA, spokesman, fund raiser?
ROY BECK, NUMBERS USA: We’ll sign up anybody.
BUCHANAN: Is that what is being said over at your Christmas party tonight?
BECK: That’s right. We had a good Christmas party.
BUCHANAN: Right.
ADAMS: Well, we’ll sign up anybody.
And the fact is, is that we have always said that this is an issue that’s great for Democrats. I wouldn’t say that she’s so much outflanking the president on the right, as that she’s outflanking him on the right, the left and the middle. A Pew poll showed a year ago, for example, 76 percent of independents and 76 percent of Democrats are in favor of really cracking down on illegal immigration.
BUCHANAN: Right.
BECK: So this is a smart move, but most politicians have just stayed away from it.
BUCHANAN: All right, let me ask Karen Hanretty.
You’re out there in California, Karen. You know this thing is blazing hot. You had Proposition 187 I guess back in—when was it? -- 1994 that carried the state 60 to 40. Illegal immigration, the tremendous problems it has for the California budget, the driver’s license issue, and you got a president of the United States who’s utterly indifferent to the illegal immigrant situation, except for offering an amnesty.
Has Hillary Clinton taken a step that you think will reach into the independents and many Republicans?
KAREN HANRETTY, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, I’m going to briefly disagree with the premise of some of your statement there.
But I would welcome Hillary Clinton to come out to California. And I never thought I would say this, but I would be happy to pick her up at the airport if she could talk some sense into the Democrats here in California who year after year after year are trying to legalize driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. And then, this past year, Democrats, liberals in San Francisco, it’s no surprise, have actually talked about giving illegal immigrants the right to vote in California.
So, if Hillary Clinton, who is a far-left liberal, if this is her first step toward moderating her positions—and we embrace that and we welcome her here in California, because this blue state needs some help with the Democrats in the legislature, who dominate policy in California.
BUCHANAN: All right, well, let me ask Dave Pollak those specific questions. Is Hillary Clinton prepared to say—to support the Sensenbrenner position in the House? You know there was a big battle in there, where Sensenbrenner and the others said, look, you know, border security is homeland security.
The first thing we have got to do is make sure that illegal aliens don’t have driver’s licenses, because the 19 guys who went into those buildings on 9/11 had 67 driver’s licenses among them? Is she ready to take positions like that?
POLLAK: Well, first of all, let me just correct Karen and say Hillary Clinton’s been very consistent on this her whole career.
But, also, I think we have to be realistic. Policy-makers in this country have to understand that there’s many, many people here illegally. They are working. They’re employed. They’re contributing to the economy. So we can’t just stick our head in the sand and say we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to ignore it.
An important part of homeland security is not only dealing with illegal immigration, but also dealing with the people, many of whom have lived here for generations and generations. And I would put it to the Republicans. They’re in control of the Senate, the Congress, the president. We need to come up with some plan to deal with this fact.
BUCHANAN: All right, let’s—let’s quote Tony Blankley exactly. He called—this is the position staked out by Hillary Clinton. He called it Pat Buchananesque.
Hillary said—and I quote—“I do not think that we have protected our borders or our ports. We can do more and we can do better. I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants. People have to stop employing illegal immigrants.”
Now, let me ask you, Roy Beck, is that a xenophobic position?
(LAUGHTER)
BECK: Not at all. And it’s a good American position. It’s a good Democratic position.
BUCHANAN: It’s a Buchanan position.
BECK: That’s right.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
BECK: But one of the first things she could do is to start working in a bipartisan effort to mandate workplace verification. If she wants to stop employers from employing...
BUCHANAN: Well, she said that.
BECK: And that’s a good place to start.
BUCHANAN: She said she wants to stop big employers from hiring illegal aliens, instead of Americans.
I agree with you. If she took this issue up in the Senate, we have got the House.
BECK: Yes.
BUCHANAN: The House is with us. And the Senate is lousy on this issue, but I think Karl Rove is getting the message.
But if Hillary Clinton would walk across the aisle, find some good conservative Republican and have a joint bill that deals with what the gentleman, Dave Pollak, talks about, down the road, workers and things like that, but at the same time deals with controlling the borders, stopping illegal immigration, I think she could go far with it.
BECK: And she could.
And it’s not like it would be new for a Democrat. Senator Feinstein from California and Senator Byrd from West Virginia....
BUCHANAN: Right.
Hanretty: ... both Democrats, have done very well on these kind of issues. But when they get out there, most of the Democratic senators aren’t with them. Senator Clinton could bring some extra people along.
BUCHANAN: Karen, do you expect to see Hillary out there in California going down there, checking out that fence at Imperial Beach?
Hanretty: I don’t expect that Hillary will be in California any time soon. And, in fact, if she did, she would be likely to be called by the Democratic Latino caucus a racist, which is what they called Republicans at a press conference a week ago for daring to talk about some of the illegal immigration issues.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: Isn’t this a pretty gritty statement by Hillary Clinton? I don’t see any caveats in there.
(CROSSTALK)
Hanretty: It’s a little disingenuous coming from Hillary Clinton, who, in 2003, joined with another Senator Corzine in New Jersey to actually exempt an entire community of illegal immigrants from deportation from this country. And they were illegal immigrants who are the spouse and children of victims of the September 11 attacks.
We have a lot of sympathy for them, but the fact is, she did try to amend the law to handcuff Homeland Security Department from deporting an entire community of illegal immigrants.
(CROSSTALK)
Hanretty: So, she’s a little disingenuous in her sentiments.
POLLAK: Absolute mischaracterization. You said it yourself. These were relatives of legal immigrants.
Hanretty: But they’re here illegally.
POLLAK: And, again, this is Senator Clinton trying to deal with the problem that there are people living here in this country, generations of which. And we can’t just put our head in the sand and pretend we’re going to send people’s brothers and sisters home.
Hanretty: Well, then let’s say that Hillary Clinton has put her head in the sand.
(CROSSTALK)
BUCHANAN: OK. Right.
Final thoughts from my guests when SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BUCHANAN: Tomorrow night, recent Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient General Tommy Franks enters SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY. The man who led the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq will tell us what he thinks of the war effort now. You will not want to miss my half-hour with the general.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BUCHANAN: Dave, Roy, Karen, we got one minute for final thoughts.
I will start with you, Roy, here. Go ahead.
BECK: Democrats desperately need some way to show the American people, especially the independents and even their own Democrats, that they can really be trusted to care for Americans first. And this is the issue. This is a great issue for Democrats. It’s a way for them to show...
BUCHANAN: Great issue for Hillary.
BECK: It is. And it’s to show their support for the American worker and for security. And I think we are seeing some turning of tide.
BUCHANAN: Karen, you want to give some words of encouragement to Hillary?
HANRETTY: Well, look, I think, unfortunately for Hillary, the opposition won’t be from Republicans. It will be from Democrats in her party who want it both ways. They don’t want to deport illegal immigrants, and, at the same time, they don’t want to appear soft on border issues.
So, I think that Hillary’s best chance is to come over to the right side of the aisle and come out here in California, convince Democrats that they need to change their tune about illegal immigration.
BUCHANAN: OK. Dave, are we going to hear more from Hillary on this?
POLLAK: Pat, Senator Clinton understands that, in the post-9/11 world, the Democrats have to be concerned with homeland security. And part of that is border security and immigration.
But while we are being Buchananesque, we have to do it with a sense of compassion and social justice for people.
(LAUGHTER)
BUCHANAN: You have a little more compassion than Buchanan has tended to show. Is that right, Dave?
POLLAK: That’s right.
BUCHANAN: All right, let’s—Hillary Rodham Clinton also should take some advice that my friend and host of this show, Joe Scarborough, gives her today from his blog. He says what Hillary needs to do is get tough on terrorism, too—quote—“Unless Democrats confront Islamic totalitarianism as seriously as Harry Truman faced down Stalinism, the Democratic Party will be relegated to permanent minority status.”
OK, Dave Pollak, Roy Beck, Karen Hanretty, thank you all for being here.
Stick around to watch a special edition of “HARDBALL” at 11:00, when Chris Matthews visits the Walter Reed Medical Center to see how America’s bravest are doing. It is very moving.
And if you want to donate to the soldiers at Walter Reed, call 202-782-2071 or go to www.FisherHouse—it’s one word—FisherHouse.org.
See you tomorrow.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
END
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