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Ärende: Press Release (0705221) for Tue, 2007 May 22
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Press Briefing by Tony Snow
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For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary May 22, 2007

Press Briefing by Tony Snow White House Conference Center Briefing Room

˙ /news/releases/2007/05/20070522-1.wm.v.html ˙˙Press Briefings
˙˙Audio


12:48 P.M. EDT

MR. SNOW: Ready for questions.

Q Did anyone bring up Gonzales at the meeting with the Republican leaders
today?

MR. SNOW: No.

Q No one talked about it at all?

MR. SNOW: No.

Q What did they talk about?

Q What was the question?

MR. SNOW: Did the Attorney General come up in the conversations with the
Republican leaders? As we said, it was pretty predictable, talking about
the ongoing discussions of the budget supplemental, immigration reform, a
number of other issues that are still on the docket for the next few weeks
and months. People had lots of different concerns. But kind of the two
major things were obviously the ones that are top of mind right now, which
is the supp and immigration.

Q When you say concerns, what do you mean?

MR. SNOW: I mean when you're talking about things that are topics of
conversation. You've got a lot of action and negotiation going on in terms
of the budget supplemental. At the same time, certainly among senators,
there's been a bipartisan effort to put together legislation on the
immigration front. And members of the House and Senate were both sharing
their views on how to proceed.

Q What did the President tell them?

MR. SNOW: For them to know and me to remain discrete about.

Q Tony, in the past we've heard that some Cabinet members who have been in
the midst of trouble, in the midst of controversy, have gone to the
President and asked him, should they resign, and the President has
declined.

MR. SNOW: April, you are so overplaying this.

Q No, I'm not. Don't go there. (Laughter.) No, seriously. The AG --

MR. SNOW: Seriously, you are really overplaying this.

Q No, I'm not. I'm asking, has the Attorney General -- this Attorney
General gone to the President and asked him, should he resign?

MR. SNOW: I have no knowledge of that. I would doubt it.

Q Why would you doubt it?

MR. SNOW: Because.

Q We know Rumsfeld had asked the President --

MR. SNOW: There is no question of the President's support. You really are
-- you're over --

Q I am not.

MR. SNOW: No, you are. Trust me.

Q I know of another Secretary who asked the President --

MR. SNOW: I understand, but you're overreaching. I'm trying to be helpful.

Q Tony, two questions. One, this -- Senator Hillary Clinton, for President,
she was speaking on Capitol Hill at the Holiday Inn, celebrating the
Haitian Heritage Month. She said as far as illegal immigration is
concerned, she's very much concerned about unity -- family unity -- because
so many thousands of families are waiting outside the U.S. for to come
here. And the President should focus on this, that unity for --

MR. SNOW: Well, I'll tell you what's happened. I mean, Senator Kennedy, who
certainly is no slouch, and I suspect has those concerns -- and, frankly,
Senator Kyl, and others all have concerns about family -- worked together
very hard on pulling together a comprehensive immigration bill that was
going to balance a whole series of highly complex needs and concerns,
beginning with national security, then moving on to the issue of what do
you do with 11 million or 12 million illegals; how do you create an orderly
flow of people in and out of the United States, so that you do not invite
problems in terms of lax security in the future; how do you also do it in a
way that's consistent with the needs and dictates of economic growth; and
how do you do it in a way that encourages people to act as good visitors,
and in some cases, eventually to become good citizens.

So all those are conversations. And what's going to be interesting, I
think, is as members of Congress have an opportunity to look through the
legislation, they will have a whole series of specific comments. But I
think that the most important thing -- and I do feel comfortable telling
you this, Steve, about what the President said, which is, people do need
time to study it. What has happened is that there were a lot of immediate
reactions based on last year's legislation. This is considerably different
than last year's legislation. And as a result, we're inviting everybody to
take a good, hard look at it. The President thinks it's a good, strong
piece of legislation. He understands how the process works. But it is
really important to try to deal with all these issues, and seems to be a
very thoughtful way to proceed.

Q And the second question, if I may, please. There is also another
question. The big problem is the trafficking, as far as the prostitutes and
other trafficking from other countries to here and from here to other
countries. There was a conference yesterday, I went at the Sheraton in
Tysons Corner, sponsored by -- and most of the area police chiefs and CEOs
were there. What they are saying is that we have to do more in the
administration, as far as trafficking. There was a report by the State
Department, also, calling that it's a serious problem.

MR. SNOW: The President has made it clear, and he's spoken often about
human trafficking here and around the world, especially around the world.
And I daresay he's been quite outspoken about it.

Q Tony, I want to have one more question about the Attorney General here.
Is there any thought inside the White House -- the President has showed
enormous loyalty to the Attorney General -- is there any thought inside the
White House that the Attorney General has not shown the same degree of
loyalty to the President, because it should be apparent to him at this
point that he is damaging the President and that he should go?

MR. SNOW: No. No, what you're saying is that if you have political
opponents who say nasty things about a Cabinet member, that they ought to
go. The fact is, Alberto Gonzales has been an effective Attorney General --
and I will point you back to what I mentioned earlier, Jim, which is when
you get into the nuts and bolts of what the Department of Justice does,
there are no specific critiques about what's going on. Instead, what you
have is a controversy about removing six U.S. attorneys; all entirely
proper, he did nothing improper. And so the President sees absolutely no
need to proceed further.

Q Let me just follow that. If you widen out -- however, it becomes very
clear that the Attorney General has become a distraction. And so that,
again, it is incumbent upon him to say, Mr. President, I don't want to be a
distraction to you anymore.

MR. SNOW: I don't think he's a distraction. The President is perfectly
loyal. I think it may be a distraction -- again, a lot of people have been
trying very hard to turn this into a big story, to no avail. So the
distraction I think is more on Capitol Hill and some who have to report the
story, than it is with the President, who is confident in Alberto Gonzales
and is concentrating on the other business at hand.

Q But is it fair to say that for Cabinet members and those who have had
long relationships with the President, that there is a degree of
self-questioning that they must do? Isn't that part of their role, as well?

MR. SNOW: That happens in any administration. Obviously, anybody asks that
question when you're serving the President.

Q So it's fair that Mr. Gonzales should be going through that process, as
well?

MR. SNOW: I don't want to say it's fair or not; it's natural. You ask
yourself, am I doing everything I can for my boss. When you serve at the
White House, you serve at the pleasure of the President, and it is an
extraordinary honor. And it is -- certainly, anybody up here in the front
row, and I do it, myself, all the time, which is, am I doing my best? Can I
improve? What do I need to do to do the job more effectively? So that's
sort of a standard piece precisely because of the nature and the honor of
working for a President.

Q Did the President, in the session today, do anything to try to further
inhibit the no confidence vote by talking to Republican members --

MR. SNOW: No. No. It did not come up.

Q Tony, on the war spending bill, indications are that it's going to move
forward this week, before Memorial Day. In this White House, is that seen
as a victory?

MR. SNOW: What will be seen as a victory is providing, through the end of
the fiscal year, the funding and flexibility the forces need. That's what
we've wanted all along. But in this particular case, rather than trying to
sort of cast this in who wins and who loses on Capitol Hill terms, the
President's determination is to follow through on his obligations as
Commander-in-Chief to make sure that the men and women fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and also those who are serving in humanitarian efforts there,
in conjunction with the government, that they get what they need.

Q Do you think that this battle with Democrats over the supplemental has
hurt the relations between this White House and the leadership?

MR. SNOW: What we understand is that you've got Democratic leadership in
the House and Senate, and there are going to be times when we lock horns.
On the other hand, there are going to be times, such as on the Senate side,
working together on immigration reform. There was consensus; Democrats and
Republicans all said they wanted to get the supplemental worked out before
Memorial Day. So I think at a time like this, Bret, it sort of creates a
notion that somehow you go through these big mood swings, and people are
shocked that politics will erupt. Well, of course, it erupts. But the most
important thing to do is try to move forward effectively and get people's
business done. And we hope that's what happens here.

Q One more thing, on another topic. This is not asking you for a book
review, but Al Gore's new book is out, and he says that Saddam Hussein
posed no threat and that President Bush, "forged evidence that Hussein was
seeking to develop atomic bombs."

MR. SNOW: Well, the second is false, and the first is in contradiction to
Senator Gore -- then Vice President Gore's prior statements. So I'll let
him rectify those differences.

Q To follow up with the supplemental, it seems like the White House is
close to consensus, and at least there are Democratic aides who are telling
our colleagues on the Hill that there are some points that the White House
has agreed to -- first, of course, no time lines; second, some benchmarks
that are tied to reconstruction aid; and also an increase in the minimum
wage to $7.25 an hour. Are these things that the White House --

MR. SNOW: We are not going to discuss any of those things. As I've said,
one of the reasons why I think the talks have been able to proceed is that
we are not floating trial balloons, nor are we responding to trial
balloons. I think when both sides have worked out what they think is an
acceptable agreement, I will let them do it. It is inappropriate to try to
cherry-pick different items that somebody may have called you and asked
about, because as you know, quite often people do that for their own
reasons. I don't want to say yes or no to any of these things. I'm just
going to say, "no comment."

Q You're saying it's not not true?

MR. SNOW: I'm saying I'm not commenting on it, because that is -- we've
been pretty consistent on that.

Q You set the precedent, as you said earlier, that because you said you
didn't want all the other extraneous items in the war supplemental, you're
not going to accept the minimum wage?

MR. SNOW: I didn't say that. I said I'm not commenting on those reports.

Q But you did say something -- paraphrasing what you said, you said, we
already said that we weren't going to deal with it.

MR. SNOW: We've said that we resist attempts to try to put extraneous
things on the bills.

Q Tony, if the Alberto Gonzales situation is not a distraction to the
President, is that because his advisors have not brought it to his
attention?

MR. SNOW: Again, if you take a look at the -- the question is, has this
changed the way in which the Department of Justice functions? Has it
affected any core function? The answer is, no.

Q So have his advisors brought it to his attention?

MR. SNOW: The President doesn't need advisors to draw to his attention the
fact that the Attorney General has been called to Capitol Hill and other
people who have worked for the Attorney General have been called to Capitol
Hill. He understands these things.

Q What was his response to the testimony last week of James Comey?

MR. SNOW: No response that I'm aware of.

Q One more quick one on President Carter. Now that he's said that his
remarks last week were maybe careless or misinterpreted, are you willing to
say that he is maybe more relevant?

MR. SNOW: He's a former President of the United States, and he certainly
makes his views known, and I think it's always important to treat the
office with respect.

Q On the Attorney General again. You've got Monica Goodling testifying, I
think, tomorrow. What do you anticipate from her testimony --

MR. SNOW: Don't know.

Q -- and what happens if you continue to lose support of Republican
senators?

MR. SNOW: Again, those are all a bunch of "what ifs," none of which -- I'm
just not going to play the "what if" game.

Q Isn't there a point where the support for him -- for the Attorney General
is so low --

MR. SNOW: Again, the question is, is he doing his job or not? And the
answer is, he's doing his job, and he's doing it effectively.

Q Tony, thank you. Two questions. In regard to what a Washington Post
editorial hailed as breakthrough on immigration, which the President
supports, the Chairman of the Republican Party in Texas, Tina Benkiser,
said this: "It will be yet another colossal failure in dealing with the
massive invasion of our country. It accomplishes nothing more than to
compromise the security of the American people." And my question: Does the
President believe this Texas Republican leader doesn't know what she's
talking about?

MR. SNOW: Let me tell you what the President believes about the
legislation, rather than trying to pick a personal fight, which is always
more tangy, but less useful from my standpoint.

The legislation actually commits more resources to border safety and
security than has ever been committed in the history of the United States,
and far more than was originally contemplated by Republicans as recently as
a year ago. The President is keenly aware of concern about border security,
which is why, before the program can even proceed to the next step, it
requires having 370 miles of fence built, 200 miles of vehicular barriers,
and the ability to have electronic surveillance over more than a thousand
miles -- UAVs, radars -- and also the ability to respond quickly.

The other fact is that the administration, already having taken steps to
beef up the presence on the border, has, in fact, reduced the number of
illegal crossing and, therefore, remains committed to it. We certainly
understand the concern of many Republicans and Democrats about border
security and think we have done a good job on it. And it's important to
note also that in many cases, people have had reactions based on somebody
else's paraphrase of the legislation, rather than a thorough and careful
reading, which is why we invite people to take a look at it, because when
they do, they are going to see that there is a serious commitment here.

I'll give you a classic example. Duncan Hunter thinks that only half of the
fence that was proposed in a bill that he wrote is going to be built. No,
all of it is going to be built. But the fact is, you can't move on to the
next phase, the temporary worker program, until you've got 370 miles built.
That's more than 200 miles getting constructed in the next 18 months.

So the point here is when you talk about invasions, when you talk about
sort of a number of those characterizations, you have to keep in mind what
the President has proposed. This is not the bill the was laid out before
Congress last year. It is serious, it is substantive, and the President
does support it because he thinks it's good for security and also because
he believes -- and I think the chairman of the Texas Republican Party would
probably agree -- it's important to know who is here illegally. This bill
gives us the capacity to do that for the first time. It gives us the
capacity to make sure whether people are working or not. It also allows
those who are involved in legal work, in law enforcement, to be able to
narrow down the focus not to 11 million people, but to those who really do
present a clear and present threat, or a conceivable threat to American
safety, so that we can go ahead and deal with those sorts of problems and
get the people out of the country.

Q Second, Tucson's Arizona Star reports that the governors of Arizona and
New Mexico have written the President, protesting the State Department's
recruiting 120 Border Patrol agents for $134,000 a year, to send to Iraq,
which the governors say makes no sense because we should be focusing on
supporting our nation's security efforts along the Mexican and Canadian
borders. And my question: Why is the President allowing the State
Department to do this?

MR. SNOW: What the President does is -- number one, you've got to keep in
mind that these are not inconsistent. Sending people over to do work in
Iraq is not inconsistent with sending people to the border. And --

Q They're taken from the Border Patrol -- we need people at the border.

MR. SNOW: Well, again, have you been -- I don't know if you've noticed,
Les, but what we're talking about is 18,000 people on the border. That is
twice the size of the Border Patrol inherited by the President.

Q They don't have them there yet.

MR. SNOW: They are building them up at a speed that is unprecedented in
American history. You know that as well as I do.

Q Could I ask you to clarify one thing about your sense of the situation
involving the Attorney General and its effect on the Justice Department?
Are you saying that the Justice Department has not been adversely affected
by the recent events involving the Attorney General?

MR. SNOW: Jim, I don't know. It is a gigantic operation. Has it changed the
ability to prosecute cases, to go after drug dealers, to try to take a look
at antitrust, to investigate things on the civil right front? Has it done
that? It is not clear --

Q How about as far as federal prosecutors who feel a sense of --

MR. SNOW: Career federal prosecutors are completely untouched by this.

Q How is that? You don't feel that morale --

MR. SNOW: Because they're civil service. As a matter of fact --

Q You don't think this has affected morale in the Justice Department at
all?

MR. SNOW: I don't know. I don't know, but I think what, again, you have to
ask yourself how prosecutions continue apace. What has happened is that you
had some appointees who were replaced and they were replaced by career
prosecutors, in some cases, on an interim bases.

Q I'm just saying, do you think the people who do the heavy lifting, that
there's been no adverse effect on morale?

MR. SNOW: I just don't know, Jim. I think, again, I think a lot of people
are trying to fish and to make far more out of this because there is the
prospect of congressional hearings. But again, if you take a look at
something as large and vast -- you start calling out the U.S. attorneys
office, does that mean you're not prosecuting cases? Does it mean that
you're unable to make the normal sorts of judgments about how to prosecute
or not?

The fact is that law enforcement is something where people spend a lot of
time developing professional capability and they do their jobs. And
especially after they get out of Washington, D.C., quite often they're
spending their time thinking about what are the things on my desk today?
And they think in very practical terms about how to proceed.

Q When you say that the Iraq supplemental has to give the funding and
flexibility to the troops, what in the supplemental provides that
flexibility? What do you mean, "flexibility"?

MR. SNOW: We've always talked about the ability of generals or commanders
on the ground to make decisions about how to deploy resources effectively
in response to changing challenges on the ground.

Q And when is the deadline to get this done? If the House stays in over the
weekend --

MR. SNOW: I'm not -- the House and Senate have both sort of set informal
deadlines. Speaker Pelosi says she wants it done before Memorial Day;
Leader Reid wants it done before Memorial Day; we want it done before
Memorial Day. I think at this point, everybody hopes to get it done in a
timely basis, but those conversations have to continue.

Q Is the President optimistic from what he hears from Josh Bolten on this?

MR. SNOW: I'm not going to characterize, but all along he's thought we'd
get -- he has said many times he's optimistic about getting to where we
need to be.

Q Do you have a preview of the Coast Guard address tomorrow?

MR. SNOW: He's going to talk about the war on terror and remind people
about the kind of people that we've been fighting. He'll talk a bit about
al Qaeda and some of the challenges that we continue to face.

Q Tony, I have one more Al Gore book quote. (Laughter.) "The President
deceived the public by suggesting that Iraq was involved in 9/11." He says,
when the administration continued to "make bold and confident assertions
that leave the impression with 70 percent of the country that Saddam
Hussein was linked to al Qaeda and was primarily responsible for the 9/11
attack, this can only be labeled deception."

MR. SNOW: Unfortunately, the Vice President* probably has been listening to
people who have deliberately misled him. The President has made it clear
over and over and over that there was no relationship between Saddam
Hussein and September 11th. And again, from my own personal experience,
when we would go on the day of the State of the Union address -- the State
of the Union address in 2002 I guess, or 2003, the question arose, "Do you
think that Saddam is linked to September 11th?" The President said, no, we
have no intelligence to link Saddam directly to September 11th. So he has
never tried to make that tie.

And what the Vice President is doing -- it's been tried by a lot of other
people -- which is to take something the President hasn't said, expose it
as a "lie" and then beat him up for it. The President told the truth. So I
don't know -- I don't know if they're going to do a reprinting of the book
to try to get the facts straight; fact checkers may have to take a look at
it. These are highly complex publishing issues, and I can't be an expert on
them.

Q Tony, you also realize Mr. Cheney had talked about an operational link,
perhaps, between al Qaeda and Saddam, talked about Mohammed Atta having a
meeting -- there's been a lot of --

MR. SNOW: Right, but that's an entirely separate issue from the quote that
was read by Bret.

Q Some people don't view it as a separate issue if it contributes to a view
in the general public that there was some Iraq tie to 9/11.

MR. SNOW: Well, again, you had Abu Musab al Zarqawi on Iraqi soil; you had
reports that there were, in fact, al Qaeda members on Iraqi soil before the
war began. That's in the intel that you saw before the war.

So, again, I think what happens is that people are trying to -- you know,
if at first you don't succeed, try to figure out another angle by which you
can go after the President, where everybody saw the same intel -- at least
in those early days after September 11th, they all basically agreed to what
they had seen. The President has been straight about the intel.

Q In the search for a successor to Paul Wolfowitz, are you looking for
someone who will continue his anti-corruption drive?

MR. SNOW: Again, I'm not going to get into any general characterizations,
other than to say that it is absolutely vital for the World Bank to be an
effective vehicle for trying to alleviate poverty in the Third World.
Obviously, any time you have corruption in a lending institution, that
works against those goals. But you want to figure out how best to do it,
and so that is going to remain the focal point.

Q When do you expect to have a new --

MR. SNOW: Don't know.

Q Don't know?

MR. SNOW: Don't know.

Q Separately, is the United States seeking to gain the release of the
American scholar being held in Iran and accused of fomenting a revolution?

MR. SNOW: We are not commenting on the case. We certainly know that the
Iranians have leveled charges, but we're not commenting on the case.

Q -- is reporting that the White House might be preparing a second surge in
Iraq. Can you tell us something about this?

MR. SNOW: Right now, we're -- the question is, a second surge to Iraq. No,
we're in the middle of the Iraq plan that General Petraeus put together.
And what you have is the movement of forces in, trying to create conditions
of greater security within Baghdad. And at the same time, there are also
ongoing efforts, especially in Anbar, to try to create conditions of
greater safety, and those have clearly enjoyed some success recently. So,
no, the story is wrong.

Q If this plan doesn't work, is there any way it can --

MR. SNOW: So far the indications are that things are moving forward in a
positive direction. It seems to me that it's highly premature to be asking
what happens if it fails, when you've got success in Anbar, when you do
have continued efforts to build greater capability, going after bad actors
wherever they may be within Baghdad. You're still moving forces in -- we're
not going to get all the forces in for some time yet, to have a full
buildup. So those are the kinds of questions that really don't make sense
when you're in the process of carrying out your mission. What you do
constantly is assess how you do a better job, and they do that each and
every day.

Q Regarding the violence in Lebanon, do you have any indication or evidence
to link --

MR. SNOW: No, I mean, the most important thing is that the violence has got
to end. And militia violence is something that was targeted by U.N.
Security Council Resolution 1559. It is noteworthy that Syrian officials
recently did warn or at least threaten potential security problems in
Lebanon as a result of the establishment of the Rafik Hariri tribunal. But
I don't want to try to draw you a causal link there. The fact is that there
is a situation now that is unacceptable violence, and we support the
Siniora government, and so, for that matter, does the international
community.

Q When you say the timing was meant to disrupt the tribunal --

MR. SNOW: I didn't say that. I said that it recently threatened potential
security problems. The tribunal is something, that you know, that the
Syrians have resisted. They certainly have been involved in Lebanon before.
And the Assad regime remains an organ of state terror. So all those are
facts. But again, at this point, we're still studying exactly what's going
on, as one would expect. But the most important thing for us is that the
Siniora government be able to continue building itself effectively. Now,
again, the Siniora government has been fighting back in the refugee camps,
and it does continue to enjoy the support of its allies.

Q To follow up on that, is the administration considering shipping
materiel, equipment, or weapons to the Lebanese government?

MR. SNOW: Again, I'm not aware that there have been specific requests. On
the other hand, we do, in fact, supply that kind of support to the
government of Lebanon when it is necessary.

Q I'm trying to understand your argument on Gonzales. You're basically
saying that the Justice Department is so big, and that the machinations are
already so much in place that it really doesn't matter who is leading or
what's going on.

MR. SNOW: No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that there's a
controversy about six U.S. attorneys which, while it is splashy here in
Washington, is a very tiny slice of the overall responsibilities and
obligations of the U.S. Department of Justice. And the question is, has the
Department of Justice been forced into a situation where it cannot function
because people are calling former members of the Justice Department to the
Hill, or that they're trying to look for Karl Rove emails. The fact is, the
Justice Department is comprised of a lot of highly competent, dedicated,
career civil servants who continue to do their jobs. And the President --

Q The issue is Republican senators, even, saying that Gonzales is no longer
an effective leader of that department. Is that not important?

MR. SNOW: The President disagrees with them -- six senators, and the
President disagrees with them, respectfully.

Q Any luck on finding out about the President's policy on wearing
seatbelts?

MR. SNOW: Well, it's always important to wear seatbelts, especially when
driving slowly on the ranch. (Laughter.) But I think it's, in point of
fact, something that -- we encourage everybody to wear their seat belts.

Q -- Secret Service person here at the White House ask the President and
all occupants --

MR. SNOW: No, but I'll tell you what -- the Secret Service, I guarantee
you, looks after the President and is absolutely determined to ensure his
safety in every way possible.

Q Thank you.

MR. SNOW: Thank you.

END 1:15 P.M. EDT

*former Vice President
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