Rove defends record on Iraq, Plame, Katrina

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   >>> now to a man who is no stranger to controversy in washington. republican strategist karl rove served as president george w. bush 's closest adviser for two terms. during some of the most trying times ever faced by an american president . rove opens up about that experience in his new book,

   "courage and consequence: my life as a conservative in the fight." he is with us exclusively and we should mention he is now a fox news contributor. karl , good morning. good to see you.

   >> thanks for having me.

   >> the book only comes out today. already the critics have gotten a hold of it. and some are saying this is 500 pages of you rewriting history , that this is putting the best possible spin on some very controversial episodes. dana millbank, who wrote about the bush white house for "the washington post " writes "that business about president george w. bush misleading the nation about iraq ? didn't happen."

   >> let's stop right there.

   >> go ahead.

   >> let's stop right there. he said one sentence. i devote an entire chapter to showing that bush did not lie about iraq . in fact, i quote democrats. there were 110 democrats who voted for the iraq war resolution . 67 of those democrats, including john kerry , john edwards , hillary clinton , on the floor of the congress said iraq had weapons of mass destruction . so, he may be able to dismiss it in one snarky line, but i have the facts in here.

   >> what you write in the book is that the president, president bush , would not have invaded iraq if he had known there were no weapons of mass destruction . and what you write is, "would the iraq war have occurred without wmd ? i doubt it. congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without evidence of wmd ." but people have come forward saying there was intelligence pointing that saddam did have weapons of mass destruction , but there was also intelligence pointing in the other direction and there were voices of dissent, and those were ignored so the president could make his case.

   >> the intelligence was worldwide agreed that he had wmd . he had ignored 14 resolutions following his surrender after kuwait to account for his wmd . he had spent 12 years stiffing the international community . we now know because of two international reports by two international weapons inspectors, kay and doefler, that he was diverted tens of millions of dollars a year from the oil for food program to keep together the necessary --

   >> but the agreement was not worldwide. this is from bob woodward 's book " state of denial ." in october of 2002 , the top intelligence officer, major general james spider marks, in charge of looking for wmd in iraq looked at 146 wmd sites and said "he couldn't find with confidence there were necessary weapons of mass destruction or stockpiles at a single site."

   >> well, that's one, but there were many intelligence --

   >> but you said it was worldwide. there was disagreement.

   >> there was a consensus. it doesn't imply that everybody agreed, but it implies that the preponderance of evidence and the majority of agreement was that there were wmd . and look, this is a bipartisan agreement. it was al gore and bill clinton , as well as republicans who said he had wmd .

   >> even former british prime minister tony blair in a memo in 2002 wrote " president bush had made up his mind to take military action even if the timing was not yet decided, but the case was thin."

   >> well, he agreed with the decision. and again, the british intelligence also believed that he had wmd . in fact -- again, it's a worldwide consensus. you can go back and try to rewrite history , but at that moment, we as a nation were faced with the belief that he had wmd , that he was a threat to the stability of the region, and in the aftermath of 9/11, the calculus changed, and it was, i repeat, a bipartisan agreement.

   >> you say if the president --

   >> so, if president bush lied, then president clinton lied, senator clinton lied, senator kerry lied, senator edwards lied, senator kennedy lied.

   >> did the president share all of the information with the american public, all the intelligence , all of the dissenting voices? because if you go back to your assertion that congress wouldn't have voted for the use-of-force resolution without the threat of wmd , you don't have to be too big a cynic to say, of course they beat the drums about wmd .

   >> well, this will be surprising to you. the president was restrained. the president said i don't -- you know, if there are things that we don't have confidence in, we're not going to say them. in fact, you know, secretary powell, for example, went out to the cia to review the evidence for several days, literally 24 hours a day, talking to the experts, reviewing the evidence to come to his own conclusion. the president encouraged that kind of review. we made the information available to congress. congress had access to that intelligence as well.

   >> you write in the book that one of the biggest mistakes you think you made was not staying on the offensive against the critics of president bush after this thing started to fall apart. so, the mistake wasn't saying, hey, we made a mistake, we got bad intelligence or we acted on the wrong intelligence -- you were worried more about the political damage to the president?

   >> you know what i was worried about was this -- and let's be clear about what it was in the book that i talked about, and that is that in july of 2003 , on one day, senator ted kennedy goes out and says bush lied about wmd . this is a man who two days after the vote -- which he voted against the iraq war resolution -- nonetheless, went out and made a speech saying iraq has wmd , there are other ways besides war that we can use to restrain that. the same day, senator tom daschle , leader of the senate democrats , went out and said the president is misleading the american people . the next day, senator john kerry and senator john edwards in separate appearances say the president misled the american people , was lying about wmd . they're joined by jane harman . when you have five major democrats in two days pick up the same line, which they know is incorrect, that bush lied about wmd , it was a political attack aimed at the heart of the administration and we should have responded more than we did.

   >> let me move on because we've got a lot to cover. hurricane katrina , by all accounts, the federal response , the federal government 's response in the first couple of days, few days after hurricane katrina was a disaster, and there was that picture, karl , of the president looking out the window of air force one, looking down at the flooded region, and it made him look terribly out of touch.

   >> disconnected, disconnected.

   >> with the tragedy on the ground. from the book, you write "i am one of the people responsible for that mistake." when did you realize that pr-wise and imagewise for the president, it was a disaster?

   >> well, i knew it was -- look, let's put it in context. the president of the united states , if he had dropped into new orleans that morning, would have discombobulated recovery efforts. they would have had to close the air space . rather than a cargo plane coming in with rescue people, it would have been president bush .

   >> but that picture almost was worse than no picture.

   >> we should have gone to baton rou rouge, which is where the governor was and where the emergency disaster center was, and that's where we should have gone.

   >> you also wrote "we did not have the ability to get realtime information so did not realize the initial reports we were getting were wrong." this is the president of the united states . did anyone at the white house turn on the tv? we had realtime information.

   >> the media did not have realtime information. for example, the media led people to believe there were snipers. so, as a result, rescue personnel refused to go into some of the --

   >> but we showed the suffering at some of these places.

   >> and that's the point, is that you, for example, you didn't know about the suffering at the convention center until the government did, but the government should have known about it earlier, and that's one of the big reforms to come out of katrina is that the federal government 's now aimed at getting realtime information and not depending, as it has in past emergencies, for the state and local people to provide the information about what's going on on the ground.

   >> jan bartlett said katrina was politically "the final nail in the coffin ." do you agree with that?

   >> i'm not sure i agree it was the final nail in the coffin , because i don't believe the bush administration was by any means dead.

   >> the cia leak scandal was so big, i can't dig into it now. you testified before a grand jury on that, but there are a couple questions i have about it, karl . when did you first -- and i mean a date -- when did you first tell the president of the united states that, in fact, you were involved in that leak and you were a second source?

   >> well, first of all, i did not believe i was a second source. my contribution to this was when bob novak called me and said, in the course of a long conversation, one or two sentences -- valerie plame , whom i didn't at first figure out was joe wilson 's wife, sent him to africa, and when i said, i've heard that, too. if he had said to me, can you confirm, i would have said, i can't confirm.

   >> what you thought was an offhanded comment was used as a second source attribution?

   >> i thought from the way he talked about it was that he had this from someone else in the government and he had it confirmed from the cia.

   >> but when did you first go to the president, what date?

   >> shortly after this all began to bubble up?

   >> in september or -- august or september of 2003 ?

   >> in august or september of 2003 .

   >> so, in august or september of 2003 , you then realized, uh-oh, i'm the guy who gave him his second confirmation. yet, on september 29th , 2003 , on october 7th , 2003 , and on october 10th , 2003 , scott mcclellan , the press secretary for the white house , went before the media and said in no uncertain terms , karl rove had nothing to do with this.

   >> giving her name. i didn't know her name. i didn't know her name. bob novak got it from someplace else. i'm not --

   >> but are we splitting hairs? did you know that scott mcclellan was giving out information that was not correct?

   >> i did not know her name. her name was given to novak by undersecretary of state richard armitage . nobody knows for three years and when they figure it out in august 2006 , it's a ho-hum. "the washington post " writes an editorial saying, why didn't we know about this before and it's no big deal ?

   >> so, do you think you owe scott mcclellan any apology for what he said to the media on those occasions?

   >> no.

   >> none whatsoever. you write in the book, you say when the prosecutor in this case, patrick fitzgerald , i guess contacted your lawyer, and said he was inclined to indict, you put the phone down in the cradle and you wept. you wept because you were frightened about what might happen, that you had made a mistake? why did you weep?

   >> no, it's when -- it is when -- i believe it's when -- look, this is an enormously pressure-filled -- i think i actually weep when i get the news that he's not going to indict.

   >> i'm sorry. that's the way i meant to say it.

   >> but look, it was a lot of pressure, and i had no vulnerability on that so-called underlying offense. from the beginning, i told the fbi when i first met with them about my conversation with novak novak , and for two years, they say you're just a witness to this. and in fact, i tell in the book what they were really focused on, which is not valerie plame , which is not joe wilson . it is a conversation that i cannot to this day remember having with a reporter, and they were focused on if i can't remember this conversation with the reporter, why is it that i asked my staff to go find out if i had had a conversation with them? and when they find the answer to that, which they finally ask after two years, the prosecutor says to my lawyer, o"you rocked my world." i spent two years under investigation for something that had absolutely nothing to do with valerie plame and joe wilson .

   >> you write about it all in an amazing book. and it's going to generate a lot of controversy. karl , thank you for being here. i really appreciate it.

   >> thanks, matt.

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