Transcript: Gingrich, Holbrooke on Fox News Sunday
Sunday, July 06, 2003

The following is a transcribed excerpt from Fox News Sunday, July 6, 2003.

TONY SNOW, FOX NEWS: President Bush has made democracy the centerpiece of his foreign policy. That ambitious aim has shaped American actions in Afghanistan, where war has given way to tenuous peace; Iraq, where the post combat mop-up continues; and the Middle East, where he hopes the Palestinian Authority will forsake one-man rule in favor of power for the people.

Here to discuss the president's prospects for success, and whether the State Department is a help or hindrance in the quest, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a Fox News contributor and co-author of "Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War," and from New York, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke.
Ambassador Holbrooke, you and Speaker Gingrich disagree on the nature of the State Department. The speaker has written a piece in "Foreign Policy" and also given a speech on the topic.

But it appears to me that the real sticking point is his contention that there are, within the State Department bureaucracy, a number of foreign service officers who, although they are pledged to serve a series of presidents, tend to go their own way.
What's your experience?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: Well, Speaker Gingrich's speeches and articles are kind of an interesting combination of charges which, I think, are utterly false about the State Department, and recommendations which I primarily agree with, and, in fact, similar things I have been saying for a very long time.
On the charges side, Tony, Newt has said very clearly in his articles that the State Department is unwilling, has failed, indeed is actively not implementing President Bush's foreign policy.

I find this an amazing charge. And it's not clear to me who Newt is talking about. Is he talking about the career foreign service, which I was once a member of? If he is, he's just dead wrong. The foreign service is just like the military. It carries out the instructions of presidents of both parties after giving its own advice. They are not insubordinate.

Is it the political appointees, each one of whom is individually approved by the White House -- one of whom, incidentally, is Vice President Cheney's daughter? I don't think so. Those are the people that each administration brings in, and they include, in the State Department, Pentagon people appointed personally by the president.

Is it the secretary of state? Newt, in effect, is charging Colin Powell, which is an extraordinary charge for a man with such a distinguished military record, either with being unable to control his department or being insubordinate. So I'm a little troubled by that.
Now, on the recommendations side, he has recommended reform of the State Department. I agree with that. There's a constant reform effort going on, but it hasn't gone far enough.

He wants to dramatically increase funding. I sure agree with that. I was an ambassador in the field when Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House, and he participated in Draconian cuts in the State Department which undermined and destroyed -- almost destroyed the public diplomacy. In fact, President Clinton vetoed the first bill that came out of the Congress when Newt Gingrich was speaker because it gutted public diplomacy, among other things.

But I'm glad, Newt, I'm really glad that you and I are on the same team on your recommendations. And I will gladly join you in a taskforce to strengthen the State Department.

SNOW: OK, Ambassador, you covered a lot of ground there. Let's give the speaker a chance to reply.

First, let's talk about foreign service officers.

GINGRICH: Yes, let me start, Tony, by pointing out that 24 years ago, in 1979, I started to work on reforming the Defense Department. In 1981, I joined with Sam Nunn, Dick Cheney, Gary Hart, Bill Whitehurst and others to create the Military Reform Caucus.
In 1986, after five years of argument with the bureaucracy, opposed by every member -- senior member of the military, that was currently chiefs of staff of the Army, et cetera, we passed the Goldwater-Nichols bill.

Chairman Myers, you just introduced and just interviewed, will tell you that jointness works. Transformation works. Iraq and Afghanistan work.
Now, my point is, nobody said that it was inappropriate to raise questions about the Defense Department.

Now let's look at the foreign service. It was the "Los Angeles Times" that ran a long article quoting a series of unnamed State Department foreign service career professionals, each of them disagreeing with the president, undermining the president, ridiculing the idea of democracy in the Middle East, saying the president had -- in one case, an unnamed State Department official said this president, in two years, has destroyed our credibility in the world.

GINGRICH: Now, this was -- and they have every right to believe that, but if they truly believe it and have to say it, they should resign to say it.
SNOW: But do a series of blind quotes in the "Los Angeles Times" constitute a systemic problem within the State Department?

GINGRICH: Well, I'll give you two other examples. I personally, before talking about it publicly, talked to people in three different parts of the federal government who asserted unequivocally that the State Department diplomats who were dealing with North Korea had, for over three weeks, not told them that the North Koreans had said they had begun to start reprocessing. Now, these were serious people in three parts of the federal government, who are part of the national security apparatus.

In another case, the president has said Iran is part of the axis of evil. He has said Iran the unelected few running it. Senior officials in the State Department have described Iran as a democracy. That's a direct quote.

SNOW: Well, the secretary of state has done that.

GINGRICH: Well, I'm just suggesting to you that there's confusion here. I think that President Bush is right, and I think that President Bush's values are right, but I think that he deserves a State Department that has been reformed.

And just two last quick points. The Rogers Act, which founded the foreign services in 1924, almost 80 years ago -- the Defense Department has been reformed by the Congress again and again and again. It has never thoroughly reviewed the State Department and reformed it.

SNOW: OK. You and Ambassador Holbrooke seem to agree on the need for reform. Let me hone in on one last thing that he talked about, which is, what do you think of Colin Powell?

It seems, and to paraphrase what Ambassador Holbrooke argued in an op-ed piece in "The Washington Post," that you're saying that he is either disloyal or incompetent.

GINGRICH: No, I'm saying that Secretary Powell, who is a terrific person and who I have consistently praised and who I worked with for a long time, back before he was even national security adviser to President Reagan -- Secretary Powell made a decision when he first came in not to fundamentally change the State Department. He made a decision to represent the career foreign service. He promoted career foreign-service people into virtually all the political appointments. That was a decision, it's a policy decision.
I think that he underestimated how much -- and again, it's not me. The Hart-Rudman Commission said as a bipartisan group, talking about the Clinton State Department, that it is a crippled institution.

SNOW: OK. Let me switch to ongoing activities. Liberia -- there is some talk now that the United States is going to get involved.

Today Senator John Warner said that he believes that Congress needs to authorize any military action. Let me get your response to that announcement, and also to whether you think the United States has an obligation or a need to become involved militarily in Liberia.

GINGRICH: Yes, first of all, the president, as commander in chief, can clearly move forces without congressional approval, and I think as Ambassador Holbrooke will concede. I strongly supported the president's right to do that, even at times when I didn't agree with him. And I tried to support him in a lot of foreign-policy initiatives, in the Clinton presidency.

I think that what Warner is saying, however, is that direct, overt American involvement in sub-Saharan Africa, that this is a real threshold. I think it's a threshold we should cross, but I think we should cross it for -- we should think about the entire sub-Saharan Africa as a unit. We should recognize it's not enough, as we did in Somalia, to go in briefly to pacify things, to pull back out, to leave behind a mess.

Ambassador Holbrooke will remember that in Bosnia we were originally told we were going to be there for a year. I think we're still there. That's an objective -- and the Bush administration has been very good in Iraq and Afghanistan at not setting false deadlines.
I think we will have to do Liberia, but I think we should do Liberia in the context of looking at all of sub-Saharan Africa and recognizing that we're going to have to really build a different approach and a different system to have a decent sub-Saharan African future.

SNOW: Ambassador Holbrooke?

HOLBROOKE: On Liberia, I agree with Senator Warner that Congress should support the action. I absolutely agree that the United States should send troops to Liberia.
Where I disagree with this administration is that they should have done it weeks ago. To predicate the deployment on President Taylor's departure is a very bad idea. There are two rebel forces moving in on Monrovia. The troops might go in in a chaotic situation. The faster they get in, the better. They will be welcomed. We will not take casualties.
On Newt Gingrich's earlier point, Tony, I do need to underscore, because I think what he said was not entirely accurate about the State Department, first of all, the real issue here -- and Newt Gingrich does not want to really admit it, for obvious reasons -- is that if Newt Gingrich's criticism of the State Department is correct, the fault lies at the White House, indeed even with the president.

Because you have the most publicly disagreeing administration in recent American history, and the president doesn't seem to be able to keep it under control, if you accept Newt Gingrich's statement.

As for the foreign service, Newt, as a former foreign-service officer I repeat, the foreign service is neither insubordinate nor disloyal. And a few blind quotes in the "L.A. Times" doesn't matter.

HOLBROOKE: And on the budget, you and I are now in full agreement, but I do want to just show to you and your viewers the budget from 1994 to the present. These are the three years in which -- the four years in which you were speaker. These are the years in which the State Department was clobbered.

The new budget has risen substantially since 9/11. And here I would credit both President Bush and Colin Powell because this amount, which is more than 50 percent higher than this amount, makes a real difference.

And you and I both support public diplomacy now. And I certainly would agree that we should reform the 1924 act. But you are looking at the wrong target here. Work with those of us who want reform in the State Department.

GINGRICH: But...

HOLBROOKE: And don't find enemies that don't exist.

GINGRICH: But...

HOLBROOKE: Work with your former colleagues in the House and in the White House.

GINGRICH: Richard...

SNOW: Mr. Speaker?

GINGRICH: ... two points. First, the Hart-Rudman Commission said the State Department is a crippled institution -- a bipartisan commission describing the Clinton years -- and said the money should come only as part of a deal in which the Statement Department is dramatically reformed. It did not say ship the money without the reforms.

Second, when we worked very hard in the 1980s to reform the Defense Department, we often had members of the Reagan administration opposing us. We often had the chief of staff of the Army, the chair of the Joint Chiefs -- when the Goldwater-Nichols bill passed, every member of the senior military bureaucracy was opposed to it.

Now you look back, and the younger generation that grew up under it says, "That was a key to how we transformed the Pentagon. We would not today have the kind of jointness we have if Congress hadn't imposed it."

So I think it's fair for me to critique the institution of the Statement Department without putting all of the blame on the president of the United States or having the State Department hide behind President George W. Bush.

SNOW: Gentlemen, let me exercise...

HOLBROOKE: Newt, I agree with you. I think Goldwater-Nichols was an historic transformation. And I would strongly support, as you do, reform.
What I'm pointing out is that I'm glad you're on the right team now. I'm sorry that when I was an ambassador and you were speaker...

GINGRICH: Richard...

HOLBROOKE: ... we gutted the system.

GINGRICH: Now, wait a second.

HOLBROOKE: Let's forget the past and...

GINGRICH: No, you can't use the past up to that second and say (inaudible). The fact is, in the mid-1990s, President Clinton was saying, and State Department official after State Department official said, "We will not have troops in Bosnia or the Balkans for more than 12 months."

Many of us said to him -- and I sat in private meetings, and it was said over and over again -- "Tell the truth to the country, and I'll back you. But don't come in with a totally phony plan, suck us in for one year, don't use enough force." I mean, at one point we had two bombers trying to bomb, and three of the four bombs didn't work. It was a pathetic performance at one point.

HOLBROOKE: Newt, come on now.

(CROSSTALK)

HOLBROOKE: Newt, Newt, Newt, if you want to -- bombs may not -- there may be dud bombs from time to time, whoever the president is. But the military that fought so magnificently in Afghanistan and Iraq...

GINGRICH: Richard...

HOLBROOKE: ... and has served so well in Bosnia and Kosovo was a bipartisan creation.

GINGRICH: Richard, are we still in Bosnia?

HOLBROOKE: Now, listen...

GINGRICH: Are we still in Bosnia, or did we get out after 12 months?

HOLBROOKE: Newt, Newt, the president -- President Clinton's statement that we would get out after 12 months was a grievous mistake.

GINGRICH: Right.

HOLBROOKE: It shouldn't have been made. And I have written that in my book.
Nonetheless, on the day before I want to the Dayton negotiations, START negotiations, the House, under your leadership, passed by over 3 to 1 a bill opposing what we were doing. And it hurt us a lot on the diplomacy. You did not give President Clinton the same support that we Democrats have given President Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That's history now. But I would point out this: Bosnia and Kosovo worked. American troops are down 90 percent in those two countries. The total American casualties, killed and wounded, in seven years in the Balkans is zero. We're not having the kind of chaos we have in Afghanistan because we went in heavy and then lightened up, instead of going in light and then having to send in more troops.

And the thing is Iraq is unpredictable, but Afghanistan cannot be judged a success...

SNOW: OK.

HOLBROOKE: ... since the military is over.

And so, if you want to talk about the Balkans, which I don't think is all that interesting to viewers today, I'm happy to do so, because the record is one of success.

SNOW: All right, gentlemen...

HOLBROOKE: And the Clinton administration did nation-building, and we did it right. And now I hope we'll do it right in Afghanistan and Iraq...

SNOW: All right, gentlemen...

HOLBROOKE: ... and help the Liberians.

SNOW: ... I'm afraid I have to blow the whistle here, but I want to get you back, and I want to get you back soon, because there are a lot of important topics to take up, including America's relations with its European allies. We didn't get to that today, but I hope we do it soon.

Newt Gingrich, Richard Holbrooke, thank you both.