J$P Instant Transcript! Ed Koch is critical of the New York Times and the CIA.

From Fox News Live, November 22 2005:

MARTHA MacCALLUM [FOX NEWS]: Is President Bush under attack in the press? But it is not only the critics of the Iraq war that seem to be hammering away these days. Some newspapers seem to be taking a less than fair and balanced approach, you might say, to covering this President. In a New York Times editorial, former New York City mayor and Democrat Ed Koch blasts the paper for demonizing the President, and he joins me now. Welcome mayor, good to have you with us as always. You couldn't help but notice that that picture of the President trying that locked door in China was sort of used as a metaphor in newspapers all around at least this city and other--

ED KOCH: To make him look like a bumbler. And what they forget, whether it's the Times or other newspapers, is we are at war, a war that is going to go on for years. And while you certainly can criticize the President, whether it be on domestic or foreign issues, there has to be a certain respect paid to him, not to demean him, and reduce the impact of this country abroad and, some would say, endanger our soldiers on the battlefield. Now, an editorial that they had recently, and I just have to refer to the language, they said about the Presidency: it is an administration with no agenda and no competence, adding, the rest of the world simply can't afford an American government this bad for that long, referring to the three years that he has left. And then they went on to say this about Cheney: Mr Bush cannot fire Mr Cheney, but he could do what other Presidents have done to Vice-Presidents--keep him too busy attending funerals and acting as the chairman of studies to do more harm. And then they said the cause of the nation's problem is the President himself. Now I don't think that's the language that the Times used in prior years, when they used a scalpel instead of a machete.

MacCALLUM: To play devil's advocate, it's an editorial. I mean, a lot has been said about what you might find on the front page of the New York Times and other papers in terms of opinion that is seeping into regular news coverage. But don't they have the right to put whatever they want on that editorial page?

KOCH: They have the right, but they have also an obligation to the country and to the people of this country. I'm saying that there's no objection to criticizing him, and in years prior the language that they would employ would be more disabling in the sense of nuances than this. But this is unacceptable because it demeans the Presidency. Now I'm not someone who flinches from a language debate. But I had greater confidence in the Times and its editorials in prior years than I do today, and I think that's true of many, many people.

MacCALLUM: When you look at the intelligence question that has been the source of a lot of argument lately, you're a Democrat, a very strong politician in your own right for many years. When you look at that in a fair way, do you think that these arguments are legitimate in terms of misreading the intelligence, or manipulating it which is a stronger charge?

KOCH: No, I'll tell you why. No, he didn't manipulate the intelligence. The intelligence, the CIA--the CIA said they had weapons of mass destruction in the Iraqi. Comparable agencies at the, for every country whether it's Germany or France or Syria, said the same thing at the UN. They were all dead wrong. There was a time when Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction. It killed thousands of Kurds and Iranian soldiers. But they got rid of them. Stupidly, they refused to say when and where. The President had every right to rely on Tenet. If there is anybody who should be punished, and I mean embarrassed, it's George Tenet who gave, through his agency, false information. He didn't lie. He was just incompetent, and he got a medal instead.

MacCALLUM: And at the time when he retired, everybody asked why. Why would he be stepping down at this moment?

KOCH: He got a medal. Well he said he stepped down to take care of his son at school. It's ridiculous.

MacCALLUM: All right, Ed Koch. Thank you so much; always a pleasure to have you. Appreciate it.

KOCH: Thank you.