Alan Keyes
May 15, 2002

ALAN KEYES, HOST: Welcome to MAKING SENSE. I'm Alan Keyes.

Up front tonight, breaking news. New developments about America's security before September 11 and what the White House knew. MSNBC's Bob Kur is standing by with more details. David? I'm sorry. David Gregory — David?

DAVID GREGORY, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Alan. This is David Gregory in Washington. Indeed there are some revelations tonight about what the government knew before September 11 that are startling. The White House is confirming tonight that the president was provided with intelligence information in the weeks leading up to the September 11 attacks saying that Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda organization might attempt to hijack American airplanes either in the United States or overseas.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Actually, General Tommy Franks, who is head of U.S. central command, spent the day assessing his operations here in Afghanistan, visiting troops in Kandahar, Kabul and at Bagram Air Base...

KEYES: Thanks.

Meanwhile, FBI chief Robert Mueller is revamping his agency to create a new anti-terror team that will oversee the agency's worldwide efforts to prevent future attacks. We're looking, unfortunately, at what appears to have been a colossal failure of American intelligence.

We have now the reports from the FBI, a memorandum that was prepared where the threads that could have helped to understand and identify this possible threat were available, it seems, information that was floating in different systems and universes in the U.S. government, some of which did apparently filter up to the top, to a sufficient degree that the president himself, we understand, may have been briefed about this.

We have joining us now to talk about it, Cliff May, the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; and Rick Hahn, a former FBI agent and MSNBC analyst. Gentlemen, welcome to MAKING SENSE.

Now this breaking news that we have heard obviously must raise a lot of questions in the minds of Americans looking back on September 11. We actually haven't seen as yet a systematic effort to get to the bottom of what went wrong on September 11. But in light of the things that are coming out, what do you make — wait a minute. We have breaking — further breaking news from David Gregory. Gentlemen, we will get back to you in one moment. David?

GREGORY: Alan, yes, I just wanted to finish up our reporting here. Again, according to the White House tonight, the president was informed by intelligence officials before September 11 that the al Qaeda organization, that Osama bin Laden might try to hijack American airliners, either in the United States or overseas.

It's an important development for sure. It's one that they took seriously when they got the information and prompted a private warning to federal agencies and U.S. interests overseas. But what officials say tonight is that what was known at the time was still a general sense of concern about a potential action by bin Laden, than maybe a traditional hijacking. They had no information, according to officials, that any of the airliners that would be hijacked could be used on suicide missions, as they were so tragically on September 11.

KEYES: But is there any indication that any kind of analysis or connection was made between this kind of reporting and what has come out recently about the memo from the FBI, where some analysts had, in fact, laid out a possible use for these planes?

GREGORY: Well, what White House officials are saying tonight is that while there have been admissions now that all of the information was not synthesized adequately enough, it doesn't change the view in their mind, it doesn't change the fact in their mind that information put together was nothing that added up to the government's ability to prevent the attack. The knowledge, the concern about Osama bin Laden predated this administration for sure. They had a threat assessment dealing with al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. They were beginning to take action and then September 11 happened.

According to officials tonight, the information they received was still general enough that they felt there was only so much action they could take to prevent it. There weren't enough tangible signs to actually prevent the attacks. But it's another piece of evidence about missed signals that didn't prevent September 11. And so it's going to be getting plenty of scrutiny for sure.

KEYES: I'm sure it will be, starting right here on this program tonight. Thank you. Appreciate the report, David.

Now, back to Cliff May and Rick Hahn. And the first question that I would like to put in front of you, starting with Cliff May, if I can, I'm looking at a situation — we have all of these different reports and threads and bits and pieces which everybody says, well, it didn't add up to enough to prevent this and so forth and so on.

Are we possibly dealing here with the fact that after a lost battle, every general will tell you that it couldn't possibly have been won and so forth and so on, or are we dealing with a legitimate inability to deal with these factors? Something is tantalizingly just out of reach in the midst of all of this. Was that the case with our intelligence establishment before 9/11? Cliff?

CLIFF MAY, FOUNDATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: Alan, it should not have been out of reach. And let me ask you a question, you've asked many times: Does this make sense?

We knew that there was a possibility jets were going to be hijacked. We knew that Zacarias Moussaoui had enrolled in a school, one of many Middle Eastern men who had, where he wanted to learn how to take off in a plane but didn't really care much about learning how to land. And we knew about the suicide strategy, the strategy of suicide terrorists killing innocent people, not just from the Middle East, obviously, where it's been going on for years against the Israelis, but think about the USS Cole, think about the bombings in Africa against our embassies. These were not terrorists who went in, lit a fuse and ran. These were suicide terrorists.

So now you put the three together, you try to connect the dots. Suicide strategy, hmm, hijacking planes, hmm, Middle Eastern at flight schools who didn't care how to land planes. How hard should it be to connect those dots and figure out what's going on?

KEYES: But let me ask you a question though, Cliff, because you say you put all those things together. Who in fact had the responsibility to put them together, because some of those threads are not in the same system? You had one thread over here, a couple of threads amongst the FBI, another thread coming out of the INS. Another thread that was coming and threads that were coming out of the CIA, who, in fact, had the responsibility for pulling those threads together?

MAY: You have just identified what is broken in the system that needs to be fixed both at the FBI and the CIA. This game consists of two parts, the collection of intelligence and then the analysis of that intelligence. You have to do both parts well in order to succeed. That didn't happen, which is why you need a reorganization in the FBI and, by the way, in the CIA as well. I'm not sure we have seen that.

KEYES: Well, Rick Hahn, let me raise a question. I want also just your thoughts in terms of what the implications are of this kind of revelation of information in the hands of our officials. But I would also want to address this question, because it strikes me that in addition to whatever may be needed within these agencies, didn't we see a failure here of interagency coordination? And who is to have the responsibility for that?

RICK HAHN, FORMER FBI AGENT: Well, it certainly appears to be the case. We don't know at this point in time who had what pieces of information, whether or not the information that the CIA had about al Qaeda possibly plotting to hijack planes was passed to the FBI and where in the FBI it went to if in fact it was passed over.

Clearly, that's what the government recognizes as its own failure also is the failure to share this intelligence and to use it analytically. On the other hand, if we look at the situation with the Phoenix memo, that was purely a speculative memo. And the problem, of course, is that we don't run investigations based on speculation. If we had — if there had, in fact, been some sort of an effort to contact every airline or every air training school in the country and solicit their cooperation and gather information on Middle Eastern males attending those schools, if the word had gotten out on that, certainly the human cry would have gone up from the Arab League and the ACLU.

(CROSSTALK)

KEYES: Go ahead, Cliff.

MAY: Alan, that's a very important point. Two things we have to understand here. One, you didn't have good interagency coordination. But the other thing you had at the CIA and the FBI is political correctness. You didn't want to have any investigation of Middle Eastern men that would be considered racial profiling when it should be considered profiling according to nation of origin, and you take nations that are hostile to us or that sponsor terrorism. Then I don't think that is — should be considered offensive racial profiling.

You also have the phenomenon of the CIA, for example, and the FBI not willing to really investigate Islamic charities that were funneling money to terrorist groups or mosques. We knew that there were radical mosques where possible terrorists were being recruited. We were afraid to penetrate them out of political correctness.

KEYES: Well, it seems to me though that — go ahead, Rick.

HAHN: It's more than a question of political correctness. It's a question of what the law allows. The FBI is a law enforcement agency as well as an intelligence gathering agency. And they can't do things...

MAY: How can it be against the law to follow up a lead if you know that people who come from the countries that are hostile to the U.S., that are sponsoring terrorism, are taking — are going to flight schools. Can you not look into that? If that's against the law, Rick, we ought to change the law.

HAHN: There was no indication that the individual that was being looked at was tied to a terrorist organization. It was a Middle Eastern male from a criteria country.

KEYES: But there were other indications, as I understand it from past media reports, that there were people who had come into the country who were tied to terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda. But that information, which as I understand, was over in the INS, didn't necessarily become part of the universe of understanding of others.

And that's a question I want to raise, Rick, because the memo, yes, it was speculative. But speculation becomes hypothesis in the context of sufficient facts and information. And then you use the hypothesis to provide the synoptic vision that allows you to pursue further investigation. Wasn't there a failure to bring those facts together so that you could make a judgment about what the relevant hypothesis would be?

HAHN: Well, I think that there certainly was a failure to bring it together and to make a stronger argument out of it. But nonetheless, the fact of the matter is is you have to have articulatable facts in order to go forward, even into the Foreign Intelligence Security Act, even presenting things to the FISA court.

And I think the Zacarias Moussaoui case is a case in point where you can see that the field agents and certainly the management in Minneapolis supported trying to get a search warrant for his computer, for example, and it never got past first base. It didn't get through the level of approval at FBI headquarters, much less the approval at the department of justice, much less presented to the FISA court.

KEYES: Let me ask a question that is actually a lead-in to what I hope will be part of our discussion in the next block. Because we're talking about interagency coordination and the need to have an approach that would allow us to bring these facts together and maybe be able to start putting together some ideas that would let us judge what was the right hypothesis or all these things part of the difficult mission of intelligence work and national security work?

I just — were we entirely without any mechanism in the U.S. government for providing on behalf of the president of the United States that kind of coordination among all of the various agencies having to deal with national security? There's nobody who works with the president whose job it is to ensure that with respect to major threats and difficulties and challenges, that kind of coordination takes place, or is there?

MAY: I would just argue very quickly that the will wasn't there. After the Cold War ended, the CIA and to a certain extent the FBI didn't quite know what to do with themselves or how to proceed. Again, I don't think there's any law against recruiting assets (ph) who go into mosques to find out who the bad guys are.

KEYES: Rick Hahn, I'm asking again, though, does the president have nobody working for him whose job it is to cut through all this different agency stuff and pull together the kind of information and coordination needed across agency lines that would achieve the effect for the national security of the United States? We've got nobody whose job that is?

HAHN: On September 11, you certainly didn't. And currently, you've got Tom Ridge who supposedly has that job.

KEYES: I don't quite understand this answer. Rick, I got to tell you, I don't understand this answer and I don't know why people are giving it. And I'm not arguing with you here.

We are going find out the answer to that question, and there is one, on the other side of this break. And we will be having more on this breaking story and a further discussion of it. We will be joined by a former undersecretary of defense in the Reagan administration.

Later, a court rules in favor of race-based admissions at a major university. Is that diversity or discrimination? We will talk about it. You're watching America's news channel, MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEYES: We're back with Cliff May and Rick Hahn talking about President Bush's pre-September 11 warning that Osama bin Laden may have been planning to hijack American planes. Also joining us, Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy and a former assistant secretary of defense. Welcome, Frank, to the show.

FRANK GAFFNEY, FORMER ASSISTANT DEFENSE SECRETARY: Thank you.

KEYES: Before I get back to the discussion we were having, I would like to get your reaction, Frank, to this breaking news in terms of the fact that we now learn that the president was briefed on the possibility of action by Osama bin Laden involving hijackings? What do you make of the kinds of bits and pieces and threads here and there that have been breaking recently that suggest that there were some leads possibly that — indications, if you like, of what was coming?

GAFFNEY: Alan, unfortunately, this strikes me as very much of a piece with all of the previous crises and surprises and attacks and the like that we've experienced in the past, in which you see with hindsight the sort of noise, as well as the signal, as they say in the intelligence business, the chatter, the chaff, the misinformation that, with hindsight, can be discerned from what was really valuable information.

And it's, unfortunately, the case that very few people get it right during the pre-crisis moment, when it's so hard to discern and make not only the proper evaluations of the information, but to take the steps that are necessary to respond appropriately. It does happen. And when it happens, we generally regard those people as prescient (ph) and heroes. But it doesn't happen very often, and in this case, obviously it didn't.

KEYES: But I have a question though, Frank, because I understand in a world where we had the Soviets and all kinds of things going on in various places, involved in a kind of war situation pressed on every front, with all kinds of things coming at us that could cause us terrible damage, that that understanding was true.

But if you were to going to give an assessment in January of 2001 of the national security situation of the United States, what would have been at the top of your list of concerns so that you would have been organizing a structure to make sure we didn't get burned in that area which was of most immediate need in terms of our vulnerability?

Surely it wouldn't have been a Soviet threat. The Soviet Union was gone and other things as well. Wouldn't Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism have been at the top of your list, not in specific but in general? I even remember speeches being given to that effect in the early part of this administration. So what other priority did they have at the time?

GAFFNEY: Well, ironically, I believe, Alan, you would say you're better off in a wartime situation because you are alert, as we are today, I think, to the array of possible dangers, and you're much more sensitive to evidence. Witness all of these color-coded schemes giving us alerts.

In that period prior to September 11, I think there were people like me and me and a few others who were saying, you know, be alert, be aware, be mindful of the kinds of dangers that are abroad in the world. But let's be honest. The Bush administration's priorities and preoccupation during this period were, as were unfortunately Bill Clinton's for most of his tenure, the domestic problems and priorities of the day.

And I think at that time, you had a political apparatus in the White House that was very anxious, Cliff alluded to this before the break, very anxious not to irritate the Arabs. In fact, they were hoping that the Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans would become a very important voting block. So this image, I think, this illusion persists even to this day, but it was ripe at that time.

KEYES: This gets me back to my question again, which I don't usually do this. I will throw it out to anybody who wants to answer it here because I was going back and forth with Rick, but I don't want to be too obvious about this, but it does seem to me that we're missing something.

MAY: Well, it's a leading question, Alan.

KEYES: It is a leading question, but Cliff May, I'm purposefully leading. Why are we acting like, even what you just said, Frank, there's somebody in the president's entourage and his immediate staff whose job it is to get up in the morning thinking about national security, to go to bed at night thinking about national security, to bring the agencies together thinking about national security, to make sure you that you have identified the major threats to this country's — the major dangers to this country and to make sure that we are prepared not to be burned by them, that we don't lose the World Trade Center or the Statue of Liberty, as we used to say when I was doing that kind of work. Who is it and why won't we say her name?

MAY: I've got to say. You have to rely on the CIA and the FBI...

KEYES: Who is it? I'm not even listening to this. Who is it and why won't we say her name? The president has a national security adviser, and that job is established under law to do exactly what we are talking about here. Will somebody explain to me why when have I this discussion with people, we act as if Condi Rice does not exist, as if her job doesn't exist, as if her job description didn't include the very coordination we're talking about here? What's the problem?

GAFFNEY: Alan, I think what I would say is in partial, at least, defense of Condi Rice is I think much of what you say is true and much of what her day is about, rightly or wrongly, is reacting to the crisis du jour.

And you talked about synoptic vision. That may be a fault she has and I think most national security advisers frankly have had because whatever their vision is, however good it is, however impressive the information and analysis and so on they're given is, it is still the case that they're looking at today's problem, today's crisis, today's issue, and that does not lend itself to the kind of anticipation that I think we really require.

KEYES: Frank, I'm sorry. I would have to disagree based on my own experience because I was there for a while, and there were folks, especially in this very area of terrorism.

When I worked for Don Fortier, it wasn't just a concern about with what was happening in the next minute. There was, in fact, a concern to develop a strategic understanding, to identify the foci of possible threat. That's where the whole question of rogue nations first began to emerge and things of this kind, a way of understanding the world that would help us to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise. You need an understanding to do that.

And why is it that the minute I mention Condi Rice's name, we assume she needs defense when nobody has even asked the question about what kind of job she's been doing? We don't know whether it's been good or bad because nobody has been willing to examine it at all.

MAY: I just don't think, Alan, that she is a super spook who assembles all the intelligence data, does the analysis and calls the shots. I don't think that's her job. There were people thinking about this. By the way, Frank Gaffney was one of them. He talked to me about this many times long before September 11.

But let's talk about something even easier. If you knew that hijackings were a possibility, what should be the reaction, to make sure that nobody was armed in any way, no good guy on any plane was ever armed so you can take over a plane with a box cutter and a plastic knife or to put sky marshals on planes and perhaps allow trained pilots to carry firearms? One of the mistakes we made was making it so easy in a sense for hijackers to take over planes.

KEYES: I'm not ready to get away from this subject yet. Somebody is going to have to convince me that when intelligence is coming from various sources in the government, the FBI, the CIA, don't tell me that it is somehow the responsibility of each of those agencies to be creating a picture that pulls together the information that comes from all of them. That is not the job of any given agency.

That must be done by the president through the person who looks at things across the government on his behalf, and that person is Condoleezza Rice. What was she doing? Maybe her job was adequate. But I don't think there's been any examination of the question of whether the job she did was adequate. Nobody has raised it in the Congress. Nobody has raised it in the media. I'm raising it here right now. What was she doing and why was it that all this information didn't get pulled together in a proper way? It's at least a question we ought to ask, isn't it, Cliff May?

MAY: I think it's a fair question. I think you're a tough guy. I just don't think Condi Rice should take the fall for this. I don't think that her job was such, and based on her background, that she could go around and be spanking the hand of the CIA, spanking the hand of the FBI, telling these guys to shape up, they don't know how they are doing their jobs.

(CROSSTALK)

KEYES: Rick Hahn, Rick Hahn, go ahead.

GAFFNEY: I think that the answer to your question — if I may — the answer to your question is, there ought to be a rigorous postmortem on every aspect of the government's handling of this crisis as it began to develop and as this information became available. The agencies, the intelligence communities, the departments, the coordinating mechanism under Condi Rice.

I will tell you, my belief is Condi Rice was focusing on other things she thought were strategic big-picture items, like the new relationship with Vladimir Putin's Russia and what we're going to do about China, specifically at the time of the crisis du jour then, namely the episode with the EP-3. You were also, I think, seeing a blind spot as a result of a political filter, a political filter that said we're not going to worry, we're not going to get cross-wise with the Arabs, particularly the Arab-Americans and I think that does require some postmortem and second guessing at this point.

MAY: Frank is right. We thought that militant Islam was a problem for Israel, maybe it was a problem for moderate Arab governments. It was not really a problem for us, even though militant Islam had declared war specifically on us, on Jews, on Christians, even though we had been hit by Osama bin Laden before, even though President Clinton had taken a cruise missile and attempted to blow up the tent Osama bin Laden was in in Afghanistan. And then somehow, we forgot about the whole effort, like he is not going to be mad and he is not going to try to get revenge just for that?

KEYES: Now, Rick Hahn, you had a thought?

HAHN: Condoleezza Rice's function is not necessarily to take pieces of information and synthesize theories. That's one thing. The other thing is we don't know that the FBI ever gave her the information, say, from the Phoenix memorandum or even about Zacarias Moussaoui. Did she really know about that prior to September 11?

KEYES: I agree with you, Rick. I guess part of what is bothering me is that we say the president was briefed, that the president knew this, the president got this or that information. Now, you and I both know that the president of the United States relies on certain individuals in key areas to help him understand and synthesize and respond to the myriad of information that he is getting.

In the national security area, that person is the national security adviser. And, yet, for some reason, everybody in this country is willing to act as if G.W. Bush was standing there by himself until Tom Ridge came along. That wasn't supposed to be the case. And if he did get the information and it wasn't processed properly, I don't think we should just assume it couldn't have been. And if he didn't get the information, as I understand and recall that particular position, one of the jobs was to make sure the right questions were being asked and the right information was being obtained so that the president didn't get burned in an area that is critical to the country.

GAFFNEY: I'm stipulating to all of that. I think that is absolutely true. And I'm also saying that I think if you look at our history, that has rarely been the case that it's been done perfectly. And you mentioned, I think you were alluding to sort of the Reagan vision of what the problem was and what needed to be done and setting it in trend. Judge Bill Clark, I think, you may remember as a very important and influential figure as the national security adviser doing precisely that kind of thing. But I think that has been the exception rather than the rule.

And what we are going to have to figure out, as we look both backwards and forwards is how do you do it better? And partly, that is going to be better people, perhaps better systems and it's better judgment.

KEYES: But right now, Frank, and I put this in front of all of you, I read the papers. They're throwing billions of dollars at this agency, reorganizing that one, bringing on more people, getting more money. I think some of that is very necessary. But if the real question also has to do with quality of personnel and of judgment and of strategic ability and vision, we shouldn't just be throwing money at this like that is going to solve the problem because clearly it isn't, is it?

GAFFNEY: You need the postmortem. That's exactly what I'm saying.

MAY: You do, and you need some restructuring. And more than you need I think finger-pointing and blame, you need to say, OK, we had a flawed system. Let's begin the long, hard process of fixing the system so we really do have the best intelligence collection we can have, the best analysis and the best interagency cooperation and the best way to get all the information and make the tough decisions at the very top of the ladder.

We've got to admit there were mistakes made. At least the FBI is doing that. The CIA has not really done that up until now. We have to start to reform if we're going to stop 9/11s in the future.

GAFFNEY: And political filter and the legal considerations that were mentioned earlier need to be addressed too.

KEYES: I have to say this though in response to that, because I know we don't like finger-pointing and all. But I'm sorry, part of assessing a situation is finger-pointing. It's trying to pinpoint who didn't do what and who did do what and who was adequate and who was not adequate, because that is part of assessing whether this country was ready and prepared.

And I think it's time Congress got off its duff now and started to do the hard work of asking these questions and getting answers before they throw money by the billions at problems they haven't even bothered to investigate and understand. I feel really strongly about this. I think that this could lead to a lot of waste without our getting an actually a better national security system if Congress doesn't wake up and start doing its proper job. And I don't think they've done it yet.

Gentlemen, thank you for being with us tonight. Really appreciate it.

GAFFNEY: Thank you, Alan.

MAY: Thank you, Alan.

HAHN: My pleasure.

KEYES: Next, more on this breaking story from MSNBC world headquarters. Plus, are race-based admissions, policies, constitutional? We're going to have a lively debate on that subject. You're watching America's news channel, MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEYES: Welcome back to MAKING SENSE. I'm Alan Keyes. Some students at the University of Michigan celebrated after yesterday's ruling by a ruling by a federal appeal's court which upheld the race based admissions policy at the universities law school.

The ruling, which divided the nine-judge panel is expected to reach the Supreme Court. The university has said its policies are simply meant to maintain a diverse community within the university. But is the use of race-based judgments to increase campus diversity really aimed at achieving that diversity or is it discriminating in favor of minorities, in this case black Americans, in order to remedy past injustices, something that the Supreme Court has in fact said is inappropriate?

Here to discuss this issue and debate this issue this evening, Dr. Richard Ferrier, president of the Declaration Foundation and a senior tutor at Thomas Aquinas College. I want to tell you that the declaration foundation is one of my brainchildren and I work closely with Richard Ferrier who worked hard on these issues for many years.

Also joining us, James Curtis, an anchor for Court TV. Both of you, welcome to MAKING SENSE.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you Alan. Good to be here.

KEYES: First, let's start with James Curtis because the students were out there celebrating and I think you probably would agree with them that this decision was a good thing. Why do you see it as a positive step?

JAMES CURTIS, COURT TV: Absolutely. I can tell you this. I remember being at the University of San Diego when the Bachi (ph) decision came down several years ago and as you recall, that was a decision having to do with the University of California and one white student saying this isn't fair, considering race is unfair, unconstitutional, and indeed it was upheld.

I think the celebration has to be in the recognition that the issue of diversity is indeed a compelling state interest which is indeed the constitutional standard that must be reached for this to be a legitimate exercise. And let me say that, unlike your introduction would imply, this is not simply and solely an exclusive decision or I should say a decision made exclusively based on race. There are a variety of factors that are involved in this decision of admission. Race is but one of them.

KEYES: CURTIS: Well, actually when I said that advisedly, I thought it might get a little rise.

CURTIS: I knew you would. That's why my wife likes you so much.

KEYES: But part of the reason for that was because when one looks at the actual results I think one might be justified in the suspicion that something else was going on here other than just diversity, and Richard Ferrier I would take it that you think something else was going on and that you don't think it's legitimate. Why do you think the decision represents a step backwards?

RICHARD FERRIER, SR. TUTOR AT THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE: Well, it represents a step backwards from principals that were fought for by the civil rights movement. And in fact that are explicitly stated in the 14th Amendment. What you have in this decision is the next level of the federal judiciary below the U.S. Supreme Court declaring that, in fact, for an undefined and probably unbeneficial goal of diversity, American citizens may be treated differently on the basis of their race. In fact, some discriminated against in the favor of others. It's appalling.

CURTIS: Dr. Ferrier, if I may, Alan, Dr. Ferrier, talk to me about what is unbeneficial, as you put it so artfully, with respect to considering race and the issue of diversity as a compelling state interest? What is unbeneficial?

FERRIER: What is unbeneficial about it in the first place is that we shouldn't treat a man by the color of his skin in the first place. What you have in these decisions is the following. The old affirmative action rationale, which was a rationale of compensating for past injustices or perhaps reaching a desired level of social equality and outcome is now replaced by the following notion: That human beings can't actually benefit from an educational institution unless they have the right ethnic mix.

If that were true, Heidelberg University in the 19th century or Oxford or the School of Athens or the historically black colleges and universities would ipso facto not have good educational quality. It is preposterous.

CURTIS: What about this notion, what about the notion that, I'm sure Alan is staunchly in favor of, that we all need to be in this country as Americans who love this country and look differently as you and I look, and everything in between, that we all benefit, and I would go so far as to take examples that Alan's show just dealt with, in terms of 9-11, what we knew and when we knew it, the riots from 1960's or as recently as the civil unrest in Los Angeles as a result of the Rodney King decision, or the problems in the Catholic church.

And the point is simply this: When you have a mix of individuals coming from a varied and diverse background, you're going have a mix of solutions brought to the fore try to deal with the resolution of any problem. The problem rises to the level of crisis when you have a group of one individual who is — a group of individuals dominant and therefore controlling the group-think process.

KEYES: Let Richard respond. Go ahead.

FERRIER: If I may respond to that, what you have in this country fundamentally is a political order based on the declaration of independence. The declaration of independence itself asserts that we're all created equal.

CURTIS: Absolutely.

FERRIER: That equality necessitates an equal treatment under the law, in which no person is preferred over another on the basis of race.

CURTIS: But Dr. Ferrier, the problem is...

FERRIER: Let me finish. I let you go on, you let me finish.

CURTIS: Go ahead.

FERRIER: And more than that, if you make the assumption that human beings are fundamentally conditioned by their race or ethnicity, then you deny what holds them together in common, and that's their reason, and that's why it is that these policies are so destructive in universities in making the assumption that human beings are biologically conditioned and not made in the image and likeness of God. I'm done.

CURTIS: See, he played the God card.

KEYES: Now, hold on a second. Hold on. I want to raise an issue for both of you to consider. Richard, on the one hand, I know for a fact that universities, even great ones like Harvard and so forth and so on in their admission policies have taken into account something called diversity, wanting students to be exposed to people from different parts of the world, different countries, different backgrounds, different socioeconomic groupings because they thought that environment would help to prepare them better for the world.

Are you saying that in and of itself there is something illegitimate about the choice to provide that kind of environment? I'm not talking about an imperative to do so, just a choice to do so? Is it OK to look for that diversity up to a certain point?

FERRIER: Let me answer that Alan. What you're looking for there is a diversity of talents, musical talent, you want some athletes. You're looking for a diversity of experiences, having lived in different parts of the world. All of that sort of thing seems to me to be perfectly reasonable. You want mathematical ability and literary ability. Those things are all perfectly reasonable. The supposition here is that skin color is a surrogate for that.

KEYES: Hold on with that. I want to go one step further with James Curtis. And maybe we will have to deal with this when we get back, but ponder this question for me, James, because I think the problem here is not necessarily the rubric of diversity, but as one fellow I saw interviewed said they weren't going for diversity unless it was based on skin color, and that was really what they were doing.

So what we may have had here, and that's why we took the slug we did tonight, was using diversity as your stated aim to camouflage what amounted to racial discrimination in favor of minorities, and the question would be, whether that's a disingenuous argument. Are we just dealing with people here who are not being honest about their real objective because that has been thrown aside by the court. Now ponder that because we have to take a brief break.

CURTIS: I'm pondering.

KEYES: We will be back with more with our guests after this.

And later, my outrage of the day, in which we have a French journalist daring to care the French atrocities in Algeria to what the Israelis did in Jenin.

First, does this make sense? Yesterday First Lady Laura Bush spoke about the importance of education in the war on terror. She, in fact, was putting together something I think is terribly important but getting to the heart of it, getting the hate out of people, teaching them respect for life. Here is what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAURA BUSH: First and foremost, we must teach all the world's children to respect human life, their own life, and the lives of others.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEYES: She spoke forcefully about suicide bombing and how wrong it is to be sending children out with this in their minds. I think this respect for life is the imperative that can overcome the culture of hate that feeds suicide bombing and terroristic war. But just for your thought, on January 19, she had this to say about another critical issue involving respect for human life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATIE KURIC, HOST, TODAY SHOW: Should Roe v. Wade be overturned?

L. BUSH: No, I don't think it should be overturned.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEYES: Hmm, “I don't think it should be overturned.” In a world where we want respect for life? Does this make sense?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEYES: We're back with Dr. Richard Ferrier and James Curtis talking about the idea of whether race-based admissions are a legitimate tool in the pursuit of diversity. And James Curtis, I asked you to ponder this question, whether this is just a camouflaged version of the same old effort to discriminate in order to remedy past historic wrongs, isn't that what we're looking at here?

CURTIS: Absolutely not. Two things; one, it doesn't matter. The idea that indeed if there have been past discriminatory practices, there's nothing unconstitutional about remedying those past discriminatory practices under the United States Constitution so as long as that remedy is tailored to fit the past discrimination.

The problem that a lot of folks have, I have to tell you and I am sure this comes as no surprise to either you or Dr. Ferrier is that the approach of, there's no redeeming value in having any policy that would deal with the — that addressed the issue of diversity and try to bring folks into the fold that have been excluded prior is the idea that, look, we want to be even-handed, everybody's equal under the law and under God, so let's start from here today and make sure we're all doing it equally with absolutely no recognition and acknowledgment of the insidious, divisive and detrimental practices that have existed up to this point.

KEYES: But James, one thing would I ask you though. I don't think it's wrong to acknowledge the insidious consequences of past history. But is this the right way to remedy it, though? Because part of what I'm bothered with when I see this kind of thing and people rejoicing at this kind of decision, is they are rejoicing at a decision that acts as if the only way to get minorities into law schools and other high level institutions is with some special treatment that lowers the bar in their favor so they can get in.

That implies that in the pool of minority Americans there aren't enough folks to people these law schools if we had the kind of effort that would reach out, draw them forward, help them get the kind of education and development that they needed. Why do we have to put up with this implication of inferiority on a policy level rather than implementing the kinds of approaches that would actually work with the talent that is in the community to really remedy these imbalances?

CURTIS: Sure, two responses. First of all, you put your finger on the pulse, as you usually do. Indeed, we do not want to lower the bar and, indeed, we do have people in our communities that are smart and can handle this work. The issue is how do we measure? What is the yardstick? Is the yardstick simply a combination of G.P.A. and LSAT, the law school admissions test? Or should that net be broader and give a yardstick that will be more comprehensive? These decisions and these practices, whether it's the Harvard model that you referred to earlier, and just as Powell refers to in his decisions, or the model used by the University of Michigan, it is making a wider net to give a longer and more even-keeled approach to what the yardstick should be.

KEYES: Richard, what do you make of this argument?

FERRIER: Well, it's a vast cloud of rhetoric that hides a little vile of poison. And the little vile of poison at the center of it is this: The court case was about preferential treatment, plain and simple. It was about, in effect granting a point advantage on the S.A.T. or similar advantages to persons on the basis of race.

When we went through this in California, the detailed statistical studies of the entering freshman class at U.C. Berkeley showed a 288-point advantage to one of the favored racial classifications over the median for the entrance of the class to the university. Every other thing we talked about, good state standards, respect for teachers, personally wiping prejudice from our hearts, organizing communities, every one of those things is important and good and I am for them and have done work in them.

I will not support, and I think 80 percent of the American people won't support treating people unequally on the basis of race.

CURTIS: Dr. Ferrier, I can tell you this as long as I sit here today that that statement that you just made is as empty as the cup of water I have here.

KEYES: Gentlemen, I am going to have to basically leave Richard though with the last word, because we have run out of time. I thank you both for joining me tonight. Next, we are going to have my Outrage Of The Day. Stay with us. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEYES: “New York Times” columnist Thomas Freedman wrote that he was in a conference recently with Eric Rulou (ph) , the Middle East correspondent of LaMonde, who said he had recently spoken to some French generals who told him that what Israel did in Jenin was worse than anything France during the Algerian war. Now, let's see, there were 60 some odd deaths possibly in Jenin. There were hundreds of thousands of deaths in Algeria and this is a fair comparison. Ha, not by a stretch. That is my sense of it. Thanks. The News with Brian Williams is up next. I'll see you tomorrow.