Thank for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly.
In the "Factor Follow-up" segment tonight, you may remember that Richard Clarke severely criticized President Bush for not paying enough attentions to warnings about al Qaeda.
However, Fox News correspondent Jim Angle came up with this tape of Clarke.
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RICHARD CLARKE, FORMER COUNTERRORISM ADVISOR: In the first week in February, decided in principle, in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy, and to increase CIA resources, for example for covert action, five-fold, to go after al Qaeda.
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O'REILLY: Obviously contradictory.
Well, after that, former Senator Bob Kerrey, a member of the 9/11 commission, said this.
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SEN. BOB KERREY, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: Let me also say this, this document of Fox News earlier, this transcript that they had, this is a background briefing. And all of us that have provided background briefings for the press before should beware.
I mean, Fox should say "occasionally fair and balanced" after putting something like this out, because they violated a serious trust.
All of us -- All of us that come into this kind of environment and provide background briefings for the press, I think, will always have this as a reminder that sometimes it isn't going happen. That it's background.
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O'REILLY: All right. Senator Kerrey joins us now.
Do you regret saying that? Come on.
KERREY: No, I don't.
O'REILLY: You really think we were wrong in letting the folks know there was a little duplicity here on the part of Clarke?
KERREY: I do in this case, yes. You come into a background briefing and -- with the expectation that it's not going to be driven out there in the public and it changes your attitude when that briefing is given.
O'REILLY: But he serves at the pleasure of the president, Bush, and Bush said to Angle hey, you can release it, go ahead.
KERREY: Well, but Bush wasn't in the interview. I mean...
O'REILLY: No, but what Angle did was perfectly legal because Bush -- the Bush administration declassified it.
KERREY: I didn't say it wasn't legal. That's not what I said.
O'REILLY: And what about the public's right to know? You know, shouldn't the public know that a guy like Clarke, who's leveling some heavy-duty charges, was duplicitous in this?
KERREY: There was plenty of ways to take Clarke on besides doing that. Indeed I did in the hearing. I mean, I think essential to Clarke's argument is that the president did not care about terrorism, as exhibited by his desire to go to war against Saddam Hussein. And I disagreed with that. I disagreed with Clarke's conclusion in that regard. I think there's a lot of ways to deal the case that Clarke is making without going into a background briefing. Of course, the president is going to say it was OK.
O'REILLY: Yes. I still don't understand, though. I mean, my job here, I would have used that tape all day long. I would have used it even if the Bush administration didn't declassify it and they could have put me in jail.
Because I want the folks to know people like you, people like me, people like Clarke, all people who have power, and we all three of us do. I want them to know really the full story about this.
KERREY: That's fine. Go ahead and -- But don't say that it's a background briefing. That's all I'm saying. The only point that I make is -- we go, and I've done many of them, where you go into the briefing and you say, "OK, this is off the record. Let's let our hair down."
O'REILLY: He didn't say off the record. It was a background briefing, and the president had a right to declassify it and did.
KERREY: Well, I don't -- OK, the president had a right to do it.
O'REILLY: And he did.
KERREY: But the president -- It's in the president's interest to declassify that, release that. There are plenty of other background briefings my guess is the president wouldn't want to declassify.
And all I'm saying is that it's a very big chill. I would, if I was still in the public eye, the next time someone comes and says, "This is background. Don't worry about it," I would look up and make sure there wasn't somebody above me...
O'REILLY: Well, you should always do that anyway. There really isn't any off the record any more in the press business. So ridiculous.
But I still think that if you think about it, the American people are entitled to know who these people are who are making these charges, because they're so important. And I think that was a very good service that we at Fox News did.