Russert Watch: David Gregory Grills, Michael Chertoff Shills

Welcome to a new edition of Russertwatch! David Gregory was sitting in for Tim Russert today, so unless you happen to be one of our token conservative readers, you probably had to go somewhere else for your usual Sunday morning dose of yelling at the TV. Politics aside, now is as important a time as any to hold Administration's feet to the fire over the current state of America's frontline defense against terrorism, with the recent thwarting of a terrorist plot to blow up several trans-Atlantic flights from London. As today's headline guest himself emphasized, the enemy does not distinguish between Republicans and Democrats, and just as terrorism is a bipartisan threat, so it is important that members of the press not let their partisanship get in the way of holding those people accountable who have the job of protecting our country, most importantly Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Over the course of the first segment of "Meet the Press", Gregory would grill Chertoff with tough and pointed questions about what the foiled attacks say about how successful our campaign against Al Quaeda has been to date and how effective our measures of improving the country's homeland security have been. And so Gregory managed to score points for a vigorous and critical questioning that can be sometimes hard to find from our usual host. (In the interest of full disclosure, we are on the record as being rather a fan of Mr. Gregory, or at least to being, er, inspired by him in the past.)

Off the bat, Gregory's is on the offensive, getting Chertoff to concede that the plot may not, in fact, have been fully thwarted, though it is likely that the "main elemens of the plot have been scooped up." The threat of a terrorist plot remains "very substantial" as John Reid, Chertoff's UK counterpart, warns in a brief video clip, and Chertoff agrees, though thankfully the evidence does not point towards an attack on U.S soil. Why not just prohibit any inbound flights from abroad until Chertoff is satisfied that the threat has been fully dealt with? Well, Chertoff assures Gregory and his viewers, a comprehensive series of measures has been put in place
to make airline travel "absolutely" safe. Of course, the plot did little to test our homefront defense of American lives, so one can only take it on faith that our U.S. counterparts would have done a good a job of uncovering the plot as the UK police did.

What about Al-Quaeda? Though reluctant to draw any definitive conclusions, Chertoff admits that the plot has all the "hallmarks or earmarks" of Al-Quaeda. (In fact, Al-Quaeda's leader in Britain was
among the men arrested in last week's anti-terror raid.) Gregory's line of reasoning is on target: "But this level of coordination and sophistication, doesn't it belie the notion that al-Qaeda has been significantly degraded?" Frankly, I find this sort of question refreshing. In the hands of Tim Russert, Meet the Press will often give a pass to someone because of their party affiliation, even when the stakes are sufficiently high that it is hard to do so without appearing to toe the party line. Of course, it's all a matter of perspective, as Chertoff is quick to remind Gregory: "it's been five years since they've been capable of putting together something of this sort, assuming this is an al-Qaeda plot... what that tells us is we actually have done a lot to degrade them." There may, in fact, be some truth in the matter, though other guests will weigh in with contrary opinions later in the show. One thing's for sure, though, Chertoff knows when to steer clear of a political mudfight when he sees one. Asked to comment on Cheney's warning that Ned Lamont's primary victory over Joe Lieberman would only encourage "Al Quaeda
types", Chertoff refuses: "I stay ouf of domestic politics." Yes, rather, we saw that during Katrina.

On to the scary stuff: liquid explosives. Quoting from the New York Times,
Gregory raises the issue of priorities, in particular of the DHS's decision to redict more than half of the $110 million earmarked for R&D to cover the cost of screeners, at the expense of research into liquid explosives. Chertoff defends his agency's emphasis on screening as a line of defense, citing the success of Israel's focus on identifying suspicious behavior patterns. As Gregory is quick to point out, however, the agency's screening efforts rated very poorly in the 9/11 commission's recommendations of last year. In fact, says Chertoff, much has been done to improve screening efforts, though the agency does come up against concerns of passenger privacy. Readers
will ultimately have to make up their own minds about who to pay more credence. I do, however, think it's telling that Chertoff would consider it to be reassuring to be told that "as we pulled back from
some of the emphasis on keeping nail clippers off the airlines, we focused on training precisely for this kind of new generation of explosives." No doubt the DHS did a great job addressing the nail
clipper threat, but we should thank our lucky stars it was the Brits who are on the case of the liquid explosives.

Chertoff may know what he's talking about (well, one would hope he does) but to me, and I suspect I am not alone in this, his credibility is utterly shot after Katrina. We're cutting RussertWatch short today and ending it here based party on this and partly on the fact that it's a Sunday in August; what, you think summer lasts forever? The rest of the transcript is here, including Ken Mehlman's modification of "stay the course" to "win by adapting," as if we wouldn't notice the sudden switcheroo (I'm serious. For this I'm indoors on a Sunday? Feh). 9/11 Commish head Thomas Kean is also in da house, reminding you that abject fear is just an orange alert away. And on that note, we're off — because if it's Sunday, then we've already spent far too much time on RussertWatch. See you in the comments!