Judicial Watch President Thomas Fitton: We were very interested to see that you testified up in New York, Mr. Woolsey, on behalf of claimants who were suing Iraq for their role in the September 11 attacks. We have a lawsuit in that regard here in the District of Columbia. A few months ago we had on our show the head of the Iraqi National Congress, Mr. Chilabi, to comment on the September 11 attacks, and he said, "You know, in terms of what we knew then, immediately it was Iraq that we could tie it to."

Former CIA Director James Woolsey: Well, I think there are a lot of ties here that we're going to be uncovering for a long time. I mean, this curious thing with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the number three man in al Qaeda, who was arrested a few weeks ago being Ramzi Youssef's uncle who was, of course, involved in the first World Trade Center bombing and a bunch of other plots against U.S. airliners. Ties and tension between them and Iraq have been talked about for some time. One of the bombers of the first World Trade Center attack was an Iraqi citizen who got away from the FBI in New Jersey and fled to Iraq. Since 1993, he has been sitting there under the protection of the Iraqi government, sort of like a cat on a fence, taunting us. This is complicated, but there's a lot going on here that we still need to understand.

Klayman: What do you think of the performance of the U.N. with respect to the disarmament of Iraq?

Woolsey: The U.N. is a service agency. It's a place for the countries of the world to come together and talk and it's useful to have something like that. What I think is proven a failure is the Security Council and this notion that you really only go to war except in self-defense and under the authority of the Security Council. Well, that's not the way people have behaved for the near 60 years since the Security Council and the U.N. were concocted. That only happened twice: when the U.S. went and got support in Korea because the Russians had walked out, and then the Gulf War of 1991. But there had been between 100 and 150 wars, depending on how you count. The French, for example, rampage around West Africa all the time and never think of asking the Security Council's permission.

Fitton: You know, I was making the point earlier, and I know I'll be accused of over-stating, but it seems to me France has been acting as an enemy of the United States here. This is not an issue of deciding on trade policy. They have actively made it more difficult for us to go to war, undermined our ability to do so and, in my view, made it more likely that individuals will die unnecessarily. That's not the behavior of a friend, in my regard.

Woolsey: Well, I think it's true that France has stepped beyond even its customary bounds of sort of standing up against the United States. I think President Chirac has really stepped over a line and that is quite extraordinary.

Klayman: James, you know, I read an article several weeks ago by Henry Kissinger. I'm not a big fan of Henry Kissinger, but I think this article is very interesting and it was talking about how the United States, during Dwight Eisenhower's era as President, blocked the British and French from retaining control of the Suez Canal and that maybe this is payback now, by the French.

Woolsey: It's a fascinating piece. I saw it too. It¹s probably not so much conscious payback as it was quite possibly a rather substantial error by the United States in 1956 which helped sort of set the tone and direction of American Policy in the Middle East for something close to half a century. I think we've been wearing a "Kick Me" sign on our back in the Middle East for a long time, probably going back to Suez. We happened to treat it as a region that was not much more than a gasoline pump for us and we haven't tried to move people in the region toward decent government, the way we helped a lot of other parts of the world. And when we've responded to terrorism, it's been either by sending prosecutors or by occasionally lobbing a few bombs or cruise missiles from afar and we have not really been solidly decisive except in the conduct up 'til the cease-fire of the Gulf War. Most of the rest of the time we've looked like we could be had and I think we got that reputation.

Fitton: But the point about the Suez crisis which for those who don't know, is that it led to the rise of this Arab nationalism in a radical sense that is causing us problems today. It’s something that's new to the region, in some respects, and can be alleviated through certain policies and one of the big policies would be Iraq.

Woolsey: The culture of the Arab world is a difficult one from the point of view of democracy. There are 22 Arab states and none of them are democracies. There are several that are reasonably well-governed and headed for being constitutional monarchies, but there aren't any democracies. But a lot of people said, after World War II, that the Germans and Japanese might not be able to figure out how to run democracies, and they said that about the Russians. There were a lot of places in the world that, in one way or another, we and our allies with influence have helped move toward democracy -- the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan -- and I think that the Arab world can too. It takes a little bit of time, but if we¹re able to make changes in Iraq, it's going to really be a wake up call to a lot of other dictators in the world.

Klayman: Switching gears, please comment on your former boss, Bill Clinton, and his failure to counter the terrorist threat.

Woolsey: Well, I wasn't a particularly close member of the team. But I do think it is important that people realize whether the decisions were by the Clintons or not, the country was in a mode of dealing with terrorists as a law enforcement problem, not a war. There were also barriers between the FBI and the CIA and it was illegal for the FBI to give material for the CIA. The whole country was in this mode of figuring that what you do with terrorists is you get a foreign government to give them to you and then you prosecute them in the courts. It's not that this was the right way to do it, but it was what everybody was doing.

Fitton: There were some people out there, you know, who thought we should be rounding everyone back then, but you're right. And Larry, you know this too, there was no significant opposition to Clinton's policy on terrorism from the Republican Party, was there?

Klayman: The problem is, of course, we still haven't dealt with the problem, even today. We've written a book called Fatal Neglect that exposes the government’s continuing failure to protect American citizens from the terrorist threat. I hope the administration retains you as a consultant to help form the counter terrorist agency that we need because, in my view, the Homeland Security Act doesn't do much.

Woolsey: It kind of gets a start. I sort of wish they'd started a little bit smaller with the border agencies and then a really thorough intelligence operation, but I think once they make a decision, we ought to all try to make it work. Tom Ridge has, next to the President, the toughest job in government.

Klayman: Thanks for joining us.

Woolsey: Good to be with you.