And why, oh why, does Chris Matthews think I should care what neo-con Cliff May thinks about anything? Matthews sounded like he was in a state of panic for a good part of this interview. Nothing like ratcheting up that fear there Chris. Thanks. The Republicans are doing their best to make hay of this incident and the media is happy to play along. I'm amazed these people have the courage to get into their cars every day of the week. If Chris Matthews thinks one more terrorist attack means we have to give up all of our civil liberties in this country and run around like scared sheep for the rest of our lives, then he doesn't deserve to live here. We've given up so many already I wonder if there are already none left, and he's talking about ceding even more to the government. Amazing.
CLIFF MAY, DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: Yes, it`s -- look, in this case, it should have been very simple. The father of Abdulmutallab went to the embassy in Nigeria and said, I think my son has been radicalized. Nonetheless, this kid had a multiple entry visa for the U.S. Just try to get a multiple entry visa from Nigeria. I have, Chris. It`s not easy. This kid also didn`t -- he didn`t have any luggage. He paid cash for his ticket. There were a million alarms that should have sounded, and they absolutely did not, and...
MATTHEWS: If all those information points were checked...
MAY: Yes.
MATTHEWS: ... and by the way, it is rare that...
MAY: Real simple.
MATTHEWS: ... a father calls up six months ahead and warns the U.S. embassy, My kid`s having troubles and may be dangerous. Let`s assume the other information points are there. He`s not carrying luggage. He`s from Nigeria. He`s on his way here through Yemen, all those points...
MAY: Exactly. Exactly.
MATTHEWS: ... no luggage, paid in cash, going through Yemen. What would you do? Would you say, You can`t get on the plane? Would you say, Here`s a 45-minute interview, like they do on El Al in Israel? What would you do?
MAY: First thing you do, yes, is you would ask him a couple of questions. And by the way, a 23-year-old kid who plans to kill himself on Christmas Day 2009, asked what he plans to do in 2010 may not have a great answer. And if he doesn`t have a great answer, you may want to keep him off the plane. But yes, you interview...
MATTHEWS: OK, who does that...
MAY: ... him. Part of the -- let me...
MATTHEWS: ... a TSA official making X many dollars an hour? Who decides...
MAY: You`ve got to have a...
MATTHEWS: ... who doesn`t get to travel?
MAY: You have got to -- I think in this case, it was absolutely clear this kid shouldn`t have a multi-entry visa...
MATTHEWS: But who would have made that decision?
MAY: You have to have somebody in TSA, it may not be the person who`s there at the metal detector but some supervisor, who can ask a simple question, like, What are you going to the U.S. for? And if you don`t get a good answer to that, you say, You know what? We`re going to have to talk to you a little more. Where is your luggage?
MATTHEWS: And then what?
MAY: Where are you going to stay?
MATTHEWS: And then what?
MAY: Then you may have to say, We can`t to let you on this flight. We`re going to ask you to go back to the embassy and be interviewed there by somebody from the State Department...
MATTHEWS: OK.
MAY: ... or someone from Homeland Security. We just can`t have everybody coming into the country...
MATTHEWS: OK, let`s go -- let`s go to E. Steven on...
MAY: ... because we`re not going to -- can I -- (INAUDIBLE) one point, and that is, right now, we have a multi-billion-dollar security apparatus, looking for weapons, not looking for terrorists.
MATTHEWS: OK.
MAY: That`s the problem.
MATTHEWS: OK. You`re saying when there`s troubling information about a person which could indicate a terrorist suspect that we send them back to an embassy or some other official for further screening. Your response to that, E. Steven Collins?
E. STEVEN COLLINS, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: I think that`s exactly what the federal government should do. But the idea that you`re just going to take a whole section of people and randomly stop them, as some have suggested -- think about the ramifications of that.
MATTHEWS: OK, what are you against specifically?
COLLINS: I`m against the idea of taking my civil rights away.
MATTHEWS: Well, no, no. That`s not specific, sir. What do you mean, E. Steven?
COLLINS: I mean...
MATTHEWS: Tell me what...
COLLINS: I mean...
MATTHEWS: You went through Yemen -- you went through Yemen. You`re traveling on cash, and you have no luggage. Is that sufficient reason, by your standards, to hold a person for further questioning and deny them admission to the plane?
COLLINS: Wasn`t this guy on a list? Didn`t we know from his father and from other information that he was likely to do something?
MATTHEWS: Five hundred thousand people are on those lists. Do you deny all of them -- you put them all on a no-fly list?
COLLINS: Well, I think that`s better than suggesting that you take away the liberties of anybody who has my complexion...
MATTHEWS: OK, look...
COLLINS: ... a bald-head and may be a terrorist.
MATTHEWS: Nobody is -- well, look, first of all, E. Steven, this is nonsense. No one is saying persons of your complexion shouldn`t be allowed to fly. So why are you talking like this?
COLLINS: I`m suggesting to you if we profile...
MATTHEWS: Who is talking like this? Why are you talking like this?
COLLINS: If we profile people and say...
MATTHEWS: Nobody`s using the word "profile."
COLLINS: I`ve heard that. I`ve heard that. I`ve heard...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: You mean by "profile," we`re making a racist decision about who gets on airplanes.
COLLINS: Essentially...
MATTHEWS: That`s not what I just heard...
COLLINS: ... I think that`s what it boils down to.
MATTHEWS: ... five minutes ago from Cliff.
COLLINS: Well, no, I think Cliff is making the point I`d make. Yes, you do have the federal government, whether it`s a person who`s making a minimum wage, if that`s what we are paying them, they should be in a position to at least detain for a period of time, 10, 15, 20 minutes, however long, an hour, two days, to find out if that person is, in fact, up to no good. A simple search would have revealed that...
MATTHEWS: Yes.
COLLINS: ... and that would have taken about two minutes. That didn`t happen here.
MAY: Chris...
MATTHEWS: Are we willing to go as far as El Al? Let me go to Cliff on this. When I`ve flown on Israeli airlines -- and I completely understand their situation. They are a country that has been targeted, seriously targeted by its enemies, who want to hurt that country every day of its existence.
They say, If you want to fly on El Al Airlines, you`ve got to wait in line, and during your four hours you`re there ahead of travel to Israel, you have to be willing to put up with a serious -- well, it`s almost an interrogation. I mean, you`re basically asked all kinds of questions. It could go for 45 minutes. And if you start to sweat, I`m sure if you start to show any indication of problems with that interview, you don`t get on the plane. Are we willing to do that, Cliff?
MAY: I don`t think we have to go quite as far, but I think we want to move in that direction. I`ve talked to Israeli security officials, and what they will say is, We don`t really care if somebody`s carrying nail clippers or shampoo or a tube of toothpaste. We don`t worry about that. What we, again, are looking for are people who may be terrorists. And we can sometimes establish if there`s a problem or not a problem with a very simple -- with one or two questions. That`s all it often takes.
There`s another confusion here and it has to do with profiling. Racial profiling I am entirely against. But criminal profiling and terrorist profiling, that is a useful investigative tool.
COLLINS: I agree.
MAY: If you are with the FBI and you`re trying to find a serial killer, you look back in your data base and you find, Are serial killers generally loners or are they people who mingle in bars?
MATTHEWS: OK...
MAY: Are they generally men, or are they generally women? You can do the same thing with terrorists. And it`s not any one trait -- religion or race or ethnicity or where they spent the summer -- but if you have a number of traits coalescing, then that person may deserve more scrutiny than some grandmother from Dubuque...
MATTHEWS: Yes.
MAY: ... or some tourist, businessman...
MATTHEWS: OK...
MAY: ... from the Netherlands.
MATTHEWS: The problem, gentlemen, is, can you do it robotically? Can you just get these simple profiling techniques, like traveling with cash, traveling without luggage that you check, and use these robotic sort of indices and know whether a person is dangerous or not? I would say that the fact we`re talking about these indices right now is our enemies knows them, and they`ll get around them. They`ll pay by credit card. They will make sure they`ve got a whole ton of luggage to put on the plane. They`ll do everything we ask them to do, E. Steven. That`s what scares me.
Doesn`t it take somebody above -- not to be sophisticated about too much, but doesn`t it take a trained almost a police officer of some kind to smell trouble? I mean, it really comes down to, it seems to me, common sense, experience, and to some extent, intuition to know whether someone is dangerous.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Let me go with E. Steven for a minute here.
COLLINS: I think the phrase "common sense" makes the most sense here, that, A, how do you begin to have a police force at every single airport in America? That`s not realistic, I don`t think. I think, though, as...
MATTHEWS: How about checking reservations?
COLLINS: Checking reservations and a list of other things. How much was checked in this instance here? It seems to me this guy just got on the plane. There wasn`t a lot of basic common sense that went on just to see who he was. Chris, if you look at just who he was and what the federal government had on this individual, there should have been enough to stop him, and that did not happen.
MATTHEWS: OK, let`s get...
COLLINS: And I think we often overreact here.
MATTHEWS: ... to the tricky part here. Let`s get to the tricky part. I fly constantly. Obviously, I`m sensitive about this, gentlemen. And E. Steven, you know me pretty well...
COLLINS: Yes.
MATTHEWS: ... and Cliff knows me and I -- anybody gets on a plane regularly worries about their vulnerability up there. And you don`t want to die in some stupid -- well, terrorism isn`t stupid, some terrorist situation. So you think about it a lot.
Here`s the question. We only have so much time and manpower, person power, to check people. You can`t check everybody all the time. A guy flying, some high school kid flying on their -- clearly with a soccer team, flying from one town to the next in Pennsylvania, doesn`t require the same kind of check somebody coming from Yemen does. So how do you do this in a way -- I want E. Steven to start here. You`re taking the liberal civil liberties position. Let`s look at it as an American people here, not just -- we`re not any country, we`re America. How do we do this?
COLLINS: I think, first of all, Chris, you recognize that all of us, regardless what color we are, want to travel safely. And many of us are willing to give up some reasonable degree of our freedoms to do that. The concern, I think, many people of color have in this nation is we don`t want to be at risk to lose our civil liberties. So it goes to...
MATTHEWS: Give me your worst case.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Suppose there`s a plane that goes down next week, by the way, and then we`ll be living in a new situation. And Cliff and I, and you know this, no matter what we say here now, if a week from now, a plane has gone down, this country will be under a totally new aspect. We will look at this, and this conversation will be very different. And the civil liberties defense will be much harder to launch and the Cliff May argument will be much easier to make. Let`s be honest about that.
COLLINS: So do we just give up our rights?
MATTHEWS: No.
COLLINS: Do we turn into what they are?
MATTHEWS: What we do a week from now if there`s been an attack that succeeds, is what I`m asking.
COLLINS: We -- we...
MATTHEWS: How do we change? Or don`t we change?
COLLINS: I don`t know. We do what we think we should do, given all that we know and how much money we have to spend because those are the factors that we have to deal with, Chris.
MATTHEWS: OK. We have to be rational and...
COLLINS: How do you just give up your rights, your inalienable rights?
MAY: I think...
MATTHEWS: You know what? When we get on an airplane, we submit to all kinds of checks we don`t by walking down the street. I think you give up a certain amount of rights just getting on an airplane. I think you`ve got to recognize that your safety is tied in with everybody else on that plane`s safety and anybody else that gets hit by that plane.
COLLINS: I think -- I think I agree with you.
MATTHEWS: You don`t own the right to be on that plane because you`re getting on an airplane. So you do have to yield some civil rights. That`s what I`m saying.
COLLINS: But that`s what`s happened. When I get on airplanes, that`s what I go through. That`s what happens to me.
MATTHEWS: Cliff, last thought.
MAY: Look, Steve, you shouldn`t be going through that because there`s no reason to be picking you out as somebody who`s likely. You do not have the profile of a terrorist. We don`t have infinite resources, therefore we need to focus on those most likely. The fact of the matter is, al Qaeda is not an equal opportunity employer. It`s not likely to hire you...
MATTHEWS: Yes.
MAY: ... or Chris or me to be a suicide bomber. If we know what kind of people they do target, then we can look more closely at those...
MATTHEWS: OK...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: And by the way, they`re going to get smarter...
COLLINS: ... look like I look...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Cliff, you know it, and E. Steven and I know it, that sooner or later, they`re going to be recruiting all kinds of people to do their dirty work for them. We know that. They`re the enemy. They`re going to use any means they can to get us. They`re out to kill us. Let`s be as smart as they are because they are already smart.
COLLINS: I agree with you, Chris.
MATTHEWS: Cliff, thank you -- Cliff May. Thank you, E. Steven Collins. Happy new year. I hope it`s a good year.
COLLINS: Absolutely.
MAY: Thank you.
MATTHEWS: Coming up: We`re in a perpetual war situation now with terrorists. What are we going to do about it? Let`s talk about somebody who knows that part of the world where the terrorism is coming from. And we`re going to learn a lot more about Yemen in about five seconds.
