[Michael Holmes, Cnn Host:] The next U.S. secretary of state negotiates her first diplomatic obstacle: getting confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
[Unidentified Male:] Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
[Holmes:] But when the questions got tough, so too did Condoleezza Rice.
[Unidentified Female:] The most well-known statement you've made was the one about Saddam Hussein launching a nuclear weapon on America with the image of, quote, quoting you, "a mushroom cloud."
[Condoleezza Rice, U.s. Natl. Security Advisor:] We went to war because this was the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a man against whom we had gone to war before, who threatened his neighbors, who threatened our interest, who was one of the world's most brutal dictators, and it was high time to get rid of him. And I'm glad that we're rid of him.
[Holmes:] Hello and welcome to INSIGHT. I'm Michael Holmes. Confirmation hearings began Tuesday for President Bush's choice to lead the State Department. Condoleezza Rice fielded pointed questions, as you just heard, about Iraq, but she is expected to be easily confirmed when it comes down to voting. CNN's Ed Henry begins our coverage.
[Ed Henry, Cnn Correspondent:] Some of the sharpest questioning of Condoleezza Rice came from John Kerry, who hoped to spend this week getting ready for his inauguration and putting the finishing touches on a Kerry cabinet. Instead the former Democratic presidential nominee was grilling President Bush's pick for secretary of state about Iraq.
[Sen. John Kerry , Massachusetts:] The current policy is growing the insurgency, not diminishing it. We went in to rescue Iraq from Saddam Hussein. Now I think we have to rescue our policy from ourselves.
[Henry:] Rice stood her ground, saying the world is better off with Saddam out of power, but she also tried to strike a conciliatory tone by acknowledging mistakes.
[Rice:] This was never going to be easy. It was always going to have ups and downs. I'm sure that we have made multiple, many decisions, some of which were good, some of which might not have been good.
[Henry:] The hearing grew even more tense when Democrat Barbara Boxer charged that Rice's loyalty to President Bush led to her hype the threat from Hussein in the build-up to war in Iraq.
[Sen. Barbara Boxer , California:] This is my personal view: that your loyalty to the mission you were given to sell this war overwhelmed your respect for the truth.
[Henry:] Rice bristled at the allegation.
[Rice:] I have to say that I have never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything. I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity.
[Henry:] Rice said the administration is determined to force Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear ambitions and vowed to confront major issues like peace in the Middle East.
[Rice:] America and the free world are once again engaged in a long- term struggle against an ideology of hatred and tyranny and terror and hopelessness, and we must confront these challenges with the same vision and the same courage and the same boldness that dominated our post-world war period.
[Henry:] Despite the tough questions, Condoleezza Rice is expected to be easily confirmed by the Senate as early as Thursday, the same day President Bush will be inaugurated. Ed Henry, CNN, Capitol Hill.
[Holmes:] Well, if confirmed as secretary of state, and she almost certainly will be, Rice will succeed Colin Powell, a respected diplomat and a man known for speaking his mind, even if it created waves. Many wonder whether Rice, who has those close personal ties to President Bush, will bring the same frank advice to the table. Here's Andrea Koppel.
[Bush:] I urge the Senate to promptly confirm Condoleezza Rice as America's 66th secretary of state. Congratulations.
[Andrea Koppel, Cnn Correspondent:] Unlike Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice enjoys a close personal relationship with the president, which observers predict will give her a big advantage as secretary of state.
[Unidentified Male:] When she goes to foreign capitals, people will talk to her knowing that she represents the president, that there is great confidence that her word is exactly what the president wants said.
[Koppel:] No significant policy changes are expected under Rice on the big issues: Iraq, the Middle East, North Korea and Iran. But once Powell departs, his voice of dissent will be replaced by a trusted confidant with a harder-line world view.
[Unidentified Female:] I think that there is a kind of intellectual synergy between them that will make her at her post at the State Department very effective.
[Koppel:] One former secretary of state, though, told CNN a president is better served with tensions in his cabinet.
[Unidentified Male:] I do not believe that you should have in Schwarzenegger someone who has spent their last four years in the White House next to the president.
[Koppel:] As national security advisor, Rice has received mixed reviews. Respect for her exceptional access to the president, but criticized for her managerial skills.
[Unidentified Male:] Her grades as national security advisor are just passed passing at best. Good support for the president, not a very good administrator of the National Security Council and not a very good mediator in terms of the conflicts within the National Security Council Structure.
[Koppel:] At the White House, Rice heads up a staff of just over 200. At the State Department, she'll be leading a staff of thousands in Washington and at embassies around the world. [on camera]: In one of her first administrative moves, widely viewed as positive, Rice tapped U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick as her deputy and U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns for another senior post. Both are seasoned diplomats with intimate knowledge of State Department bureaucracy. Both are also loyal confidants. Andrea Koppel, CNN, Washington.
[Holmes:] Stay with us. Just ahead, what Rice hopes to accomplish as U.S. secretary of state.
[Rice:] In these momentous times, America has great tasks and American diplomacy has great tasks. First, we will unite the communities of democracies in building an international system that is based on shared values and the rule of law. Second, we will strengthen the community of democracies to fight the threats to our common security and alleviate the hopelessness that feeds terror. And, third, we will spread freedom and democracy throughout the globe. The work that America and our allies have undertaken and the sacrifices we have made have been difficult and necessary and right. Now is the time to build on these achievements to make the world safer and to make the world more free. We must use American diplomacy to help create a balance of power in the world that favors freedom. The time for diplomacy is now.
[Holmes:] Welcome back to INSIGHT. In that opening statement, Condoleezza Rice emphasized the need to mend fences with allies of the United States, and there are many fences to mend. The United States angered many of its allies when it led the invasion of Iraq two years ago. Then the United States, of course, never found any of those weapons of mass destruction. And that hunt has been given up altogether. Condoleezza Rice was a key player in U.S.-Iraqi policy. Some analysts say she was more interested in a job other than secretary of state. Earlier I spoke with Howard LaFranchi of the "Christian Science Monitor" about her role in the Bush cabinet.
[Howard Lafranchi, "christian Science Monitor":] We heard that she was interested in the Pentagon and we might remember that it was while she was the president's national security advisor that much of the responsibility for Iraq was turned over to the Pentagon, but it seems that several of her friends, including the person that she chose to be her deputy at State, Robert Zoellick, now the trade representative, had a hand in convincing her to take a second look, that this was a period when the United States was going to need to be turning to diplomacy, and that she, especially with her special friendship with the president, could be an effective secretary of state. It appears that that reasoning won the day.
[Holmes:] That's interesting that you raise that point. I was curious too. Some have been saying that we might see that new direction, if you like, in foreign policy, perhaps reengage, do something about the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, fence-mend with allies. There are others, though, that say that the president's famous currency, his mandate, is really a ticket for more of the same. How do you view it?
[Lafranchi:] Well, I think it was interesting. You saw in her opening statement that Condoleezza Rice said the time for diplomacy is now. One senator, Senator Bide, Senator Joe Biden, from Delaware, came right back and said the time for diplomacy is long overdue. I think Rice recognizes that she needs to move forward. The United States is not in a position in terms of either troops or money to carry on on its own as it did in the first term.
[Holmes:] How well do you think she's going to do compared to Colin Powell, a man that had a lot of respect among those inside the State Department. He was seen as an internationalist and somebody who disagreed often with the White House and the Pentagon. How is she going to measure up in that regard? She's been somebody surrounded by the neo-cons, who has been so close to the president. How do you then translate that into doing a good job as the chief diplomat?
[Lafranchi:] Well, certainly Colin Powell was very well viewed around the world, but as a number of diplomats have told me, in the end they saw him as somewhat of a tragic figure, because he wasn't able to carry the day with his views, especially on Iraq, and in the end he didn't really have that entre into the White House. He wasn't in the president's inner circle and so he wasn't seen as the decisive figure when it came to talking to foreign leaders. In Condoleezza Rice, however, whether it's foreign leaders, diplomats, they know that when they speak with her they will be speaking to the president's closest confidant on foreign policy, and that's going to make quite a difference.
[Holmes:] How does that affect or impinge on her ability to do her job, when she's linked so closely the closest, some would say, national security advisor to a president ever, perhaps, and has been surrounded by that neo-con influence and the Pentagon influence and now she's going to go out there and play the diplomat in some very difficult situations. Do you think that she's going to be individualist in that and will speak the truth, or tow the company line?
[Lafranchi:] Well, certainly she's not going to end her friendship with the president, but it is a fine line that she has to walk now, because as one long-time member of Congress and foreign policy expert, Lee Hamilton, that I spoke with, said it's also very a very important job for the secretary of state to educate the president. It has to be someone who is willing to stand up to the president and say, "Mr. President, we're going in the wrong direction," or "This is a problem you have to pay attention to." And there were those, of course, when she was first nominated, who said that Condoleezza Rice was the very wrong person for the job for this very reason. Certainly a lot of people are going to be watching very closely to see if she does stand up to those other influences on foreign policy, particularly Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and even Vice President Cheney. But many people have said that Condoleezza Rice is a very strong person in her own right, and she wouldn't have taken this job if it were just to play second fiddle to others.
[Holmes:] And just very quickly, when you look back at the foreign policy failures or however you want to characterize them in the last four years, I think perhaps one stands out in terms of the neo-con attitude of we'll leadthey'll follow. That's being proven to be not true. Is she going to be able to turn around some of that?
[Lafranchi:] Well, she is not a neo-con herself, and of course the question of neo-conservative influence has been a raging debate. Those who say that it is waning, others who say that the reelection of President Bush was in fact a vindication of their views. I think it's interesting to note that Condoleezza Rice herself in testimony today brought up her own, in the past her own scoffing at the notion of nation-building, and today she said that was a comment that I famously made in the past, but I was wrong. And nation-building, of course, the projection of American power and American participation around the world in the sense of spreading democracy, that's a very an idea that's very dear to the neo-conservatives, and it's one that she placed a high priority on in her opening statement. So certainly some of the ideas of the neo-conservatives will be carried forth. I think what she needs what she sees that she needs to do is that the United States can't do these things alone, and so the United States will have to compromise in order to bring its allies onboard, whether it be in the Middle East, in bringing about peace there, or trying to promote democracy in countries like Iraq.
[Holmes:] All right, Howard LaFranchi, of the "Christian Science Monitor," want to thank you so much for being part of the program.
[Rice:] It would have been so easy for them to give into despair and to send that message of hopelessness to their children, but they refused the limits and injustices of their time to limit our horizons. My friends and I were raised to believe that we could do or become anything, that the only limits to our aspirations came from within.
[Holmes:] Condoleezza Rice isn't just a diplomat or a security expert. She's an accomplished pianist, an avid sports fan and a scholar who broke the color barrier in the Deep South.
[Bush:] As a girl in the segregated South, Dr. Rice saw the promise of America violated by racial discrimination and by the violence that comes from hate, but she was taught by her mother, Angelina, and her father, the Reverend John Rice, that human dignity is the gift of God and that the ideals of America would overcome oppression.
[Holmes:] Welcome back to INSIGHT. Condoleezza Rice grew up at an extraordinary time in U.S. history. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1954. Now, at that time races were segregated in the region. By law, black Americans were not allowed to go to school with whites. They weren't allowed to use the same water fountains, even eat in the same restaurants. But Rice says her parents, both of them teachers, taught her to use education as a tool of liberation. Here's CNN's Bruce Burkhardt.
[Bruce Burkhardt, Cnn Correspondent:] Two kids playing Chopsticks on a church piano. One of them is a future nominee for U.S. secretary of state.
[Unidentified Female:] She and Michael were playing Chopsticks together, and Michael was just so enthused that he could keep up with Condoleezza with Chopsticks, so he finished and then all of the sudden Condoleezza looked at him and then started with Beethoven. And I looked, and it was amazing to me that this small child at her age could do Beethoven.
[Burkhardt:] Eva Carter and Cora Williams were teenagers in the early `60s, members of the youth group here at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. Julia Emma Smith was the no-nonsense youth director in charge of the group.
[Unidentified Female:] You know the good copbad cop? She was the bad cop.
[Burkhardt:] The good cop was Reverend John Rice, Condoleezza's father. The wonderful memories these women have of Birmingham and the Rice family coexist with other memories not so wonderful. Images that still haunt Birmingham. Bull Connor and the dogs and fire hoses and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
[Rice:] I did not see the incident, but I heard it and I felt it at my father's church just blocks away. It was a sound that will be forever reverberating in my ears.
[Burkhardt:] Among the four little girls killed in the bombing was Condoleezza's childhood friend Denise McNair, seen here with Condoleezza's father, John Rice, as she graduates from kindergarten. The photo was taken by Denise's father, Chris McNair.
[Unidentified Male:] I can't help but think and wonder many days what would Denise have been doing at this point in her life.
[Rice:] The crime was calculated. It was not random. It was meant to suck the hope out of young lives, to bury their aspirations and to ensure that old fears were propelled forward into the next generation.
[Burkhardt:] The bomb didn't do any of that, and at least part of the reason had to do with men like Condoleezza's father.
[Unidentified Female:] He stressed education because he wanted us and he taught that that was the only way that we could really flourish, was to have an education, and he loved us dearly. Now, I can only imagine the type of love that he gave Condoleezza, because the love that he gave to us was just it was just magnificent.
[Burkhardt:] John Rice is revered by these women and many others around here as a man who lifted everyone around them and calmed them during troubled times.
[Unidentified Female:] But the calming way that Reverend Rice had of talking to people, of making you feel like, I mean, I know everything is going to be all right because he said it. He took us to the different temples. Temple Emanuel and Temple Bethel, so that we could see a different culture and know a different kind of religion. But her favorite thing was to play the piano. She played that thing for hours. And as I said, in the summertime, you could sit out here and listen to her, and she was wonderful. It was just great. And she would, as I said, raise the windows, and we could hear everything. It was our first exposure, I think, to classical music.
[Burkhardt:] Carol Smitherman used to live across the street from Condoleezza. She's now on the Birmingham City Council.
[Unidentified Female:] And then she'd come out and she'd say, "Did you like that? Did you know that that was a piece of Beethoven" or Bach or whatever. We'd say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, let's play ball."
[Burkhardt:] Carol was with Condoleezza in church that Sunday morning when the bomb went off across town. It's been written that Condoleezza Rice was kept insulated from all the troubles in Birmingham. Insolated, maybe, but certainly not unaware.
[Unidentified Female:] Condoleezza would call me on the telephone and you had to read the newspaper, because she could read so well, and she would say, "Miss Smith, did you see what Bull Connor did today?"
[Burkhardt:] Julia Emma Smith goes way back with the Rices.
[Unidentified Female:] That's Julia Emma Smith. That's me.
[Burkhardt:] Oh, wow. Let me see this. Mercy! [voice-over]: She was a college classmate of Condoleezza's mother, Angelina. Both very attractive.
[Unidentified Female:] All right, calm down.
[Burkhardt:] As for Condoleezza turning Republican while coming from a neighborhood and a race that is largely Democratic, no one is especially bothered by that.
[Unidentified Female:] Well, clearly I may not agree with some of her ideologies or her perspectives on certain things, but without a doubt she can handle what she's doing. Without a doubt. I don't think any of us hold any of that against her, because you're proud of what she has done.
[Burkhardt:] Proud, but not terribly surprised.
[Unidentified Female:] But Reverend Rice taught us that we could do anything we wanted to do. So having not having self-confidence, that never crossed our paths. Never.
[Burkhardt:] Sadly, Reverend Rice never got to see his daughter as National Security Advisor. He died on Christmas Eve 2000, just a few weeks before she took her oath of office.
[Holmes:] That is it for this edition of INSIGHT. I'm Michael Holmes. Stay with us. The news continues. END TO ORDER VIDEOTAPES AND TRANSCRIPTS OF CNN INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMING, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE THE SECURE ONLINE ORDER FROM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com