captions by: caption colorado, llc (800) 775-7838 e-mail comments@captioncolorado.com from washington, "the mclaughlin group," the american original. for over two decades, the sharpest minds, best can do fo america's first line of defense is timely, accurate intelligence that is shared, integrated, analyzed, and acted upon quickly and effectively. that's what our intelligence community does every day. but unfortunately, that's not what happened in the lead up to christmas day. >> so says the president in his

public statement thursday. in a private meeting on tuesday with 20 trusted top officials, he was more frank and angrier. "this was a screw up that could have been disastrous. we dodged a bullet but just barely." the stern words of the u.s. commander in chief were caused by quote unquote systemic failure, his language, that prevented officials from gaining the data to stop a christmas day al qaeda terrorist plot. a 23-year-old nigerian citizen named oumar if a huk abdul -- umar farouk abdulmutallab. he carried deadly explosives concealed in his underwear. the plane crossed the atlantic and in the approach to the detroit runway, abdulmutallab tried to detonate the bob, it failed. he was then overpowered by passengers.

catastrophe was averted powerful enough to have killed all 300 passengers had it occurred on the plane. abdulmutallab was tried in a civil court, not a military one. question, abdulmutallab could have been detained as an unlawful military combatant where he then could have been interrogated by the fbi and others. instead, he was given a miranda advisory that he need not say anything to anyone until his attorney was present. was this the worst screw-up, that particular feature that he was treated as a civilian and not an enemy combatant, the worst screw-up of all? >> john, this is one of the indemocratic problems of the obama administration in my judgment. president said two weeks after this christmas attempted bombing, we are at war with al qaeda. this was a warrior from al qaeda coming into this country to perpetrate an atrocity and slaughter 300 people. he failed, and instead of

treating him as a prisoner of war attempting an atrocity, we call the -- give him miranda rights and call him a lawyer. the obama administration has a more serious problem. this was a massive skew-up as the president said. a there is no accountability here. secondly this has emphasized the fact that the democratic party is historically weak on national security and the war on terror now has a president who is perceived as weak on national security. i think the president's been hurt. they've been deceived behind the curve. john, all of these guys going on vacation over christmas the day this bombing occurred, i think it's a real blow to the administration. >> eleanor? >> people generally do go on vacation over christmas, and you're right, that it took them 72 hours, basically, to get their act together and for the president to show the sternness and the determination that he evidently does feel when this

country is attacked. secondly, this was a system that was put in place during the bush administration, and we are very lucky that this was a wake-up call and we now see where the flaws are. presidents deserve commendation for owning up to the lapses and for identifying them and pressing ahead to repair them. thirdly, trying him in a civilian court, it's my understanding he was talking up a storm from the moment he was arrested, and the way we handle this sends messages to the rest of the world. we don't want to create more jihaddists. and trying him in our system, which is among the best if not the best justice system in the world is an appropriate way to go. and i don't recall the uproar from pat or anybody when richard reid, the shoe bomber was tried in a civil court and is now languishing in a high security prison in america.

>> okay. hold onhe has sown. president obama has been consistently critical of the cia and what dick cheney, former vice president characterizes as enhanced interrogation, which mr. obama as president outlawed. the president denies that he's witch hunting. >> i have the utmost respect for the cia. i don't want witch hunts taking place. i've also said, though that the attorney general has a job to uphold the law, but i continue to believe that nobody's above the law. >> attorney general eric holder acting on president obama's directive has announced an investigation to see whether the cia denied the civil rights of 9/11 actors such as khalid shaikh mohammed during the bush/cheney presidency. holder says the investigation,

begun in april '09, would be sweeping and bowelless. it is still underway. >> we're going to follow the evidence wherever it takes us. we'll follow the law wherever t no one is above the law. >> question. when president obama was a senator, his liberal rating on a 0 to 100 scale was 100, liberal. as a card carrying liberal, is president obama ideologically hostile to the cia and the intelligence community? i ask you? >> well, look, the founding fathers when they wrote the demme lar ration of independence guaranteed the american people for generations life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. there's a reason they put the word life first because you can't enjoy the other if you are dead. i was gratified to see president obama at least in part of his statement on thursday made a statement in acknowledgement that the united states is at war in a statement that could have been written by dick cheney and delivered by president obama. the 9/11 commission, as you'll

recall, john, said al qaeda and extremists are at war with the united states, we were not at war with them. he's finally made that acknowledgement. the problem is, as you pointed out right there, is that he's giving mixed signals to the intelligence and law enforcement communities where he's treating this as a criminal justice problem in giving these foreign enemy combatants the full panaple of constitutional rights which they are not entitled. just this week, he's had a consistent approach. when you are taking the worst of the worsts giving them constitutional rights, bringing them to new york city to have a circus atmosphere of a trial. on the one hand, he's prosecuting very effectively with the military component escalating the drone attacks in afghanistan, pakistan and yemen. i've given him credit for that. on the other hand, closing gitmo, shutting down enhanced interrogation techniques like

water boarding which could have extracted more information out of this terrorist, those mixed signals i think are undermining -- >> martin? >> but he hasn't closed gitmo. here we are discussing in the states whether obama's being a liberal. if you look at the arab press and the international press, what you are getting overwhelmingly is there's a claim there's been no real change despite the cairo speech of obama that this is the bush administration part two ion, th refusal to close down guantanamo. the point is, you can be right both ways on this. i think pat is absolute i had right to say that this -- absolutely right to say that this was not the right way to handle this terrorist but monica's right that this was the way we handled the shoe bomber. we're meant to be the good guys. we're meant to say no torture. we're meant to believe in human dignity and the proper rule of law. on the other hand, we are facing an utterly ruthless and

implaquable enemy and at some point we have to stop behaving as though we're serious about combating them. i think that the bomber has done a good job of on the one hand trying to be serious about fighting this and on the other hand trying to hang on to the very best of did. >> i think being sear yowts doesn't mean you have to -- serious doesn't mean you have to beharve the way the enemy does. the president believes, and i agree with him, that gitmo has been a wonderful recruiting tool for the jihaddists. >> that's false. >> let her finish. >> how we handle the people that we capture sends messages to the world. >> they don't care, eleanor. thenmy does not care. >> and it sends messages to americans, too, can we uphold our constitutional liberties and defend what we stand for as a country -- >> but it's intellectually -- >> you do not have to water board and torture and hold people -- >> i did not say torture. >> quickly. >> obama is intellectually incoherent. you brought this fellow in read him his miranda rights, give

him a lawyer and the president of the united states says, he's a known terrorist. he's convicted him in his own mind. are we to presume that khalid shaikh mohammed is innocent? he was water boarded 183 times. were his miranda rights violated? of course they were. >> he'll get due process. >> water boarding extracted a lot of very critical actionable intelligence from muhammad that is true. the other point about guantanamo bay being this big recruiting tool, first of all, they hit us on 9/11 before guantanamo bay even existed. secondly, the united states and the west continues to get hit by al qaeda terrorists even after obama said he's going to close it. >> hold on. can we -- [ all talking at once ] >> hold on for one minute. can we stay away from water boarding, please? these are the actions obama took that signaled the cia to back off. one, he restricted the cia's rendition to preempt terrorism. two, he closed secret interrogation center as broad.

three, he banned water boarding. four, closing guantanamo. five, he ordered captured unlawful combat anne today be read miranda rights. six, he's trying ksm, khalid shaikh mohammed and other terrorists like abdul abdul an -- abdulmutallab. he issued no protests for italy for con vicinitying 23 u.s. cia and military officials in absentia, our guys. and nine, rather, finally, he unleashed the prosecute bush policymakers for their counterterrorism policy. you want to speak to that? >> yes. i think this absolutely plays into this whole area of modern and traditional confusion that was best summed up by the supreme court during the bush administration that decided people in guantanamo did

deserve due process. in other words it's not just about obama versus bush. there is an independent judicial tradition taking place which the supreme court tried to establish. >> monica? >> the supreme court also ruled that enemy combatants held by the united states could be held indefinitely without due process. >> they did. >> for the length of the war. >> but the key thing, martin is, look, we get these fellas. what do you want out of this fella when you got this? immediate information and intelligence. no water boarding. >> you got that. [ all talking at once ] >> you are violating his miranda rights when you do that. >> did you hear the list that i just read some. >> yes, i did. >> are you persuaded that obama -- >> i agree with some of the things obama did. water boarding -- >> you think that adds up to a negative opinion by obama? >> i think it's a mitched bag. >> a suspect opinion by obama of the intelligence community? >> i think it's a mixed bag, john, and i think obama is being forced -- >> do you know of any president until you go back to the '80s

or any action like the frank church thing that has been so aggressive towards the cia? >> can i get in here on this? >> the last time it happened was under the carter era, and that was a disaster. >> the list of particulars you read, not a single one of them has anything to do with the christmas day attempted -- >> no, but it has to do with the cia and the treatment of the cia and the administration. >> you are defending the cia. there were screw ups here, they were fixable human screw ups and they also need better software -- excuse me, i want to finishp. >> these were fix ups? >> no. what went wrong -- >> i think it was a terrible [ all talking at once ] >> excuse me. i want to finish. what went wrong on christmas day was a combination of human screw ups and several agencies and a failure of computer software to link things. >> i think the larger view -- >> i want to remind you -- [ all talking at once ] >> the cia's record, frankly, has not been terribly good

since 2001-2002. >> in what way? >> just as it was bad in the 1980s. the ccht ia is a huge massive bureaucracy which trips over its own feet. this latest disafter ther in afghanistan where a failed double agent is allowed to come into a meeting where almost the entire senior staff in afghanistan and blow them all up? they didn't even search the guy before he went in. these are element typewrite failures of the trade craft. >> i think that's exactly right, john. >> what, that the cia is its own worst enemy? [ all talking at once ] >> no, the cia has made a number of foul ups. it had information, it should have stopped this thing. allen, you said people made horrible mistakes. why aren't heads rolling? >> they are probably all explainable individual mistakes that then entered into a daisy chain. i don't know that any underling's head is going to roll. >> monica, quickly. >> i want to get to the bigger point you were trying to make by reading off that litany of

obama decisions. it is creating that environment where people in the cia and military are afraid to take aggressive actions against the enemy combatants. >> they will be punished ant the ladder will be cut from underneath them. >> and they are getting mixed signals. are they running around the battlefield with plastic bags? >> your success within the cia will be limited and -- >> you get too tough -- >> and go beyond -- >> john, you get too tough and you might need a lawyer. >> exit question. is the best way for the u.s. to resolve the ongoing problem of terrorism and officially sanction assassination programs with regard to awaleeke. and we haven't gotten to that. >> it's called the drone as tack. >> that's part of a war. that's what you do in a war not a criminal justice. >> you hear that acid humor we're getting from this man? >> that's what you do in war.

>> abdulmutallab had been in tack stan, he'd been killed by a drone now. >> tell us about awaleekey and his connection with hassan and the killing of the 13 fellow soldiers. >> another foul up. there are connections between major hassan over there and maybe also with this latest guy. >> he worshiped at his mosque in fort hood, texas or in virginia. then awaleekee shows up in yemen. [ all talking at once ] >> it no. what went wrong -- >> i think it also shows us how qaeda is unable to put together the huge, spectacular operation with 19 trained terrorists using these hone wolves which are hard to find and can certainly rig a lot of terror. but they're not -- [ all talking at once ] >> one heck of a double agent

in afghanistan. >> when we come back -- [ all talking at once ] >> that's not possible to them. >> hold on, hold on. when we come back, democrats storm or strong? when planning for retirement these days, the forecast is full of ifs. if i'm too exposed to downturns. if i'll go through my savings too fast. to help you feel more confident consider putting a portion of your savings in a metlife variable annuity. when the market goes up, it gives your assets a potential to grow. while protecting you if the market goes down with a steady stream of income. let america's number one annuity provider help you stay on course with guarantees for the if in life. get answers about annuities at metlife.com.

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after 35 years of representing the people of connecticut in the united states congress, i will not be a candidate for re-election this november. >> connecticut democratic senator chris dodd announced this week that he would not run for a sixth term in the u.s. senate. he's retiring from politics. dodd's announcement came one day after byron dorgan, another democrat, announced that he would not run for senate re- election from north dakota. he would not seek a fourth term. in the house of representatives, ten democrats say they are bowing out this year. democrats davis, meets, abercrombie, moore, booth, gordon, tanner, baird. why are democrats opting out of the obama mid-term election? to avoid a bloodbath?

well, hiss store achelely a president's first m.i.t. term election has led to major losses for his party in those elections. in 1982, republican president ronald reagan's first mid-term election, republicans lost 26 seats. more notably, in 1994, president clinton's mid-term first election, democrats lost 54 seats. with republicans led by newt gingrich seizing both the house and senate in landslides. republicans are the preferred choice in 2010 polls. more importantly, polls also say that the gop is the more popular choice of independent voters. a big deal. democrats are a wash in three. >> it's a tough time for democrats, frankly. our voters are less enthusiastic than republicans and independents. >> hold on, is a linda, it's not over until it's over. today's democrats have one saving grace. 14 republicans have bowed out

of the 2010 races, which may be the reason r a victory lap. question. will republicans take over congress this year? >> no. they will -- i think they will gain three, four, maybe five seats in the senate, which means that the democrats will not be able to get to end filibusters, but i don't see the republicans winning the majority in either house. >> the dodd thing helps the democrats. throw the blumenthals up in connecticut much stronger than dodd. democrats will probably retain that seat. north dakota is a problem. i think the republican governor will wind up with that seat. john, i think the republicans will gain a little more than 26 but they won't gain the 38, 39 they need -- >> the democrats will be filibuster proof? >> no. >> 20 to 30 seat loss in the house is standard. if it goes above that, it's a problem, but it would be highly unusual if the democrats with are able to keep their 60 votes. >> the numbers are very steep for the republicans but nothing

-- >> very what? >> steep for the republicans to take over both chambers, but i will say when you look at the generic polling for the congressional ballot, republican versus democrat, republicans are running an astonishing 8 points ahead. the reason is independents that broke 2-1 in the democrats last year are now breaking 2-1 for the republicans. >> i'm surprised that martin sounds so self-assured when he says the republicans will not take over in view of the fact that we're going through an anti-incull ban si rage in the country that will reach peak strength by the elections in the fall. >> i any the economic recovery could be playing for the democrats by then. the bulk of the stimulus money is still to be spent. i think unemployment will be coming down. i think there will be some sort of feeling that the worst is over. >> do you think obama could help it along for the democrats by a second stimulus? >> i think he probably could and it might be needed. >> really? >> i think it's going to be needed. >> you think the editorial

opinion in this country would support a second stimulus when you have tea parties springing up all around? >> when you have 10% unemployment. >> if the democrats need it, they will do it john. we'll be right back with predictions. when planning for retirement these days, the forecast is full of ifs. if i'm too exposed to downturns. if i'll go through my savings too fast. to help you feel more confident consider putting a portion of your savings in a metlife variable annuity. when the market goes up, it gives your assets a potential to grow. while protecting you if the market goes down with a steady stream of income. let america's number one annuity provider help you stay on course with guarantees for the if in life. get answers about annuities at metlife.com.

[laughter] what? all right, what's the joke? what's so funny? pat, the president said no individual would be blamed with regard to or should be blamed with regard to the intelligence failures. do you think he'll fire anybody? >> heads will roll. >> i don't think he'll fire anybody. >> no, i do not think so. >> really? >> i think at least one person ought to go? >> who? >> i'm with you, martin. bye-bye.

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