The Honorable Bill McCollum, former member of Congress from Florida, appeared on the radio show “Your Turn — Meeting Nonsense with Common Sense” to discuss the recess appointment of John Bolton.  Mr. McCollum, who serves on the board for the American Security Council, also spoke with host Renee Giachino, the Center’s Corporate Counsel, about issues of national security.

What follows are excerpts from the interview that aired on WEBY 1330 AM Northwest Florida’s Talk Radio.

GIACHINO:  My first guest was born and raised here in Florida.  He began his professional career in the United States Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps.  He spent some time in the private practice of law in Orlando before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.  Today he practices law in Washington, D.C., and in Florida with the firm of Baker & Hostetler, and he serves as a board member for the American Security Council.

Welcome to “Your Turn” the Honorable Bill McCollum.  Thank you for joining us.

McCOLLUM:  I am glad to be with you, Renee.

GIACHINO:  Mr. McCollum, please tell us about the American Security Council and its mission.

McCOLLUM:  The American Security Council is a 50-year-old organization whose principal mission is to protect America’s national security, to advocate policies, to educate and to strengthen and keep us strong.  It is the organization that created the slogan “Peace Through Strength” that Ronald Reagan made famous during his presidency.

It is also the organization where the Strategic Defense Initiative was created a number of years ago, and, during the Cold War, it was considered the leading non-government organization out there advocating a strong military.

It is bi-partisan — Democrats and Republicans support it.  And now in the new world, post 9-11, it is broader in its scope, envisioning as we do the difficulties not only with the War on Terror but also how we go about in the world today and keep American support for it and also problems that we have in Latin America, with immigration and the security problems posed by the failure to identify the people who are here, and by what is going to happen in the future with China and North Korea.

Those are the principle focuses at the moment of the American Security Council.

GIACHINO:  If only we could get the U.N. to focus on some of that.

McCOLLUM:  Well, we wish we could get them better equipped.  We were very supportive recently, as you may be aware, of John Bolton’s nomination to be our U.N. Ambassador, and we are supportive as well of the recess appointment that the President just gave him because we think he is a very strong figure.  I have known him personally for a number of years and think that he will make an excellent U.N. Ambassador at this moment in our history.  We really need a strong voice up there — someone who can voice America’s perspective and still do the right thing by trying to restructure the organization which he, himself, probably knows more about doing than anyone else currently who could possibly have been nominated.

GIACHINO:  The American Security Council, if I am correct, ran television ads calling for a recess appointment, am I right about that?

McCOLLUM:  Well, we ran some ads supporting his nomination prior to the time that we got to the stage of the recess appointment, hoping that at the time we could encourage sufficient support to get it approved by the Senate.  But with Senators Biden and Dodd and others trying to do the filibuster routine that has become so common recently, we did issue a statement a few weeks ago suggesting that the President ought to go ahead and appoint him in a recess.  So we supported the recess appointment, but the television ads that we were making were directed toward getting him confirmed at the time.

GIACHINO:  Okay. 

McCOLLUM:  That is an example of what we do.  The American Security Council has a foundation on the one hand — it is totally educational and non-partisan — and then it has a companion organization that is a 501(c)(4) that is an advocacy, public policy organization.  So it is a little different from the think tanks like the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute or Brookings because they are strictly foundations.  ASC has a companion organization that advocates policy, and we are able to go out and do a little bit more than they would be able to do.

In doing that, we supported CAFTA actively — the Central America Free Trade proposal —the treaty that was just passed by the House this past week.  So it takes on both dynamics.  It has interlocking boards of directors.

GIACHINO:  So that I don’t forget to do this — for the listeners out there who have Internet access, do you know the Internet address for either organization?

McCOLLUM:  Yes, they both have websites.  The easiest way is to go to ASCUSA.org.  If anyone forgets those acronyms, just look for American Security Council and you are bound to find it.  Or you can go to AmericanSecurityFoundation.org.  The key is the dot org.  People forget that, they think it is a dot com.  When you have an organization like this, as you may well be aware, it is always a dot org.

GIACHINO:  Well, the good news for people who are out there is that if you are fortunate enough to be able to contribute to them, certainly the 501(c)(3), the contribution is tax deductible.  That is why you want to pay attention to the dot org.  It is a special designation.

McCOLLUM:  That’s right.  We are real pleased with that feature.  As I say, it has been around many, many years and has done many educational things and programs.  I am just pleased to be a part of it and to be a part of the board to try to help direct where it goes in the future.

GIACHINO:  I think that there are some folks who are surprised by the recess appointment.  Not necessarily because the President doesn’t have it within his constitutional right — he has the right to make a recess appointment while Congress is out of session.  But I think people are looking further down the road to what, if any, impact this could have on the President’s nomination of John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Mr. McCollum, do you think the Senate Democrats will use the John Bolton recess appointment as a reason to retaliate against the nomination of John Roberts.

McCOLLUM:  I think you will probably hear some rhetoric that will imply that, but I don’t believe that the Democrats as a whole in the Senate want to block the nomination of John Roberts.  I think they see that as a tip ball — Roberts is so extremely well-qualified and has such broad support in the country and already some sympathetic lead Democrats on his side that I don’t think they can do that.  At the end of the day, unless something else develops that I don’t foresee and we don’t have on the surface presently, Roberts, in my opinion, will go through hearings in the fall through the September period and be confirmed probably in time for the October session.

I just don’t think that they will filibuster him.  But that does not mean that you won’t hear some rhetoric about the Bolton nomination because they are looking for issues right now.  It’s just a reality that some of the leadership is looking for issues.  This should not be a partisan matter, but some are intent on making it that way.

GIACHINO:  It is reported that the President made the recess appointment because the diplomatic post was “too important to leave vacant any longer.”  What negative repercussions, if any, can you associate with the U.S. having left that post empty during the last five months while Bolton’s nomination was held up?

McCOLLUM:  Well, it is hard to measure the down-side from not having someone present, but it is clear that the United Nations has not always been a friendly environment for our thoughts and our views.  Yet it is a great institution to allow debate to occur.  It has huge humanitarian budgets that we want to influence the outcome of where the money goes and what happens to it, and most recently we have seen it struggle with some real corruption, or certainly the appearance of it, that demands and calls out for some re-structuring.  So at the very least one could argue that we are five months behind the eight ball in leveraging our voice — and we have a large voice because of the amount of money that we contribute to the organization — in leveraging our voice for change and structure or in leveraging our voice to gain some of the direction we want the U.N. to take.

For example, right now we know that the United Nations has been very timid in the past in terms of being any place where we have human rights violations and people who are being killed like we have in some of the African countries, like in Bosnia and etc.  And yet we have had them mouth, recently, Kofi Annan and others, a desire to have a structure that is more efficient and really is more effective.  But it is going to take the United States pushing that.  Without a United Nations’ ambassador from the United States it has not been simple to do over this interim period.

GIACHINO:  Before being sworn in and heading for U.N. headquarters in New York, Mr. Bolton said he would try to make the U.N. “a stronger, more effective organization.”  I don’t know if it is possible, do you have any thoughts on that?

McCOLLUM:  Well, certainly the United Nations is never going to meet the standard that some of us who are conservative — and I certainly am when it comes to foreign policy — would like for it to be because the composition of the General Assembly in particular is made up of every country.  Some of the newest countries are the poorest countries and they are not necessarily on the same wave length as we are and they may never be and they view things differently.  So it is not going to be something that you can completely get your arms around and mold the way that you and I might like or the listeners would.

On the other hand, there are some significant structural changes that can occur in the leadership in auditing and trying to keep certain things from happening in the future.  Like this Oil-for-Food scandal that came out of Iraq.  There can be more transparency — a word that is commonly used in our business world in the last few months and I think that implies greater openness — to the books and to the auditing and to the things that need to be made public.  It would be hard for the members of the functioning leadership of the U.N. to deny that if this path is continued up there… and I think there is some hope for changes like that.

But to change it to make it an organization that embraces things that we are always going to agree with — some of the resolutions that we have had to veto will continue to rise in the future, I am sure, simply because there is a majority of countries and representatives there in the General Assembly who do not agree with us.  That is why we do not ever want to cede sovereignty to them.

One of the things that the American Security Council is very concerned about is keeping America’s sovereignty.

GIACHINO:  We are talking with Bill McCollum.  He currently serves as a board member for the American Security Council and he is a former member of the House of Representatives.

Because we have the privilege of having on a former member of U.S. Congress, if I can back up just a bit, Mr. McCollum, there are a lot of listeners out there — and myself included, until recently — who think of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” when they think of a filibuster.  A filibuster nowadays, however, is a whole lot different.  I think that you have a somewhat unique perspective on that having served in Congress.

If we can speak in elementary terms for a moment, can you explain for the listeners, as simply as possible, what is meant by a filibuster and how one can be broken?

McCOLLUM:  Historically, there developed in the Senate — not in the House — a rule, understanding, mutual agreement, that any single member of the Senate could speak for as long as they wanted.  The rules of the House of Representatives are very tight — we limit the speeches, we have a certain time limit on any bill or amendment.  The Senate has never had that.  And by the process of development over time and history, while there have been a few long debates — Senator Strom Thurmond being one of those who has a historically prominent place in doing something like that and going on for days at end — in recent times the mere threat of conducting one of these 24 hour, around-the-clock, things has kind of deterred the business from going on.

So the rules they adopted themselves — they are purely rules, and a simple majority could and should be willing to change them — do provide that it takes 60 votes for what is called cloture, which ends the debate, and to begin the process of going to the floor with a measure or bill or confirmation or whatever.

I personally think that that is wrong.  Some of my Republican colleagues, and I am a Republican, would disagree with me, just as well as Democrats.  But it strikes me that, particularly on nominations for appointees in either the courts or the cabinet or high levels of government like the United Nations ambassador, that the President should be able to get this accomplished without having to go through this super-majority of confirmation in the Senate.

That is not what the Constitution reads — there is nothing in there that says that there has to be a super-majority of the Senators.  It just says “advice and consent,” which presumes a simple vote.  But there is a tradition that has built up here, and there are certain numbers of Senators in both parties who are willing to protect this, and that’s what you get into.

One last comment, Renee, and I hear this all the time, that why don’t we really have a filibuster — why don’t we put them to the test.  Why doesn’t a Frist or the President or somebody insist on having this debate and calling their bluff.  The real problem of that is that most of these Senators and the President want to go on with other business.  There are a number of bills just this past week that passed that really were top of the agenda items and they really are not willing to make that sacrifice — at least up to now they have not been willing to make that sacrifice of time.

GIACHINO:  Well, we will see.  It has been a long time since we have had a U.S. Supreme Court nomination so that might just bring Congress to a screeching halt.

Recess appointments, and I want to make sure that people understand this, they are not uncommon.  What the President did the other day by appointing John Bolton as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations is not at all uncommon.  It is my understanding that former President Bill Clinton made over 140 such recess appointments during his two terms and President Bush made 70 during his first term.  What’s the big stink?

McCOLLUM:  Well, I think it is just because it is Bolton and because it is so prominent of a position and because it’s one of the things that the Senators never like.  They would protest it if you ask them that question.  But most of the recess appointments are second tier and lower profile. 

By the way, that points to a real weakness in the whole process with the filibuster that you are talking about because the mere threat of holding up a nomination is enough to do it.  And a Senator often holds up the nomination of a deputy or an assistant secretary or somebody at much lower levels of government who has to be confirmed under the rules of the game, and they will do it internally over things like they want to get information or they want the President to do something or other for their state or their area.  It is ridiculous the extent to which they will go.  It does not get reported widely however when the person nominated is not being nominated for a cabinet-level or high-profile position.

That’s why you see these numbers as high as they are.  You see it has become rather routine for these recess appointments, which means that the person can serve until the beginning of the next Congress, which in John Bolton’s case will be January 2007, without Senate confirmation.  But after that, that is all there is to it.  The person has to come back and the process has to start again.  It really is a very sad commentary — not on the President for appointing people during a recess, he has no choice, but on the fact that the Senate has dissolved into this kind of situation.

GIACHINO:  Hopefully during the long honeymoon period John Bolton can prove that he does deserve that position.

Mr. McCollum, I understand that, as a member of Congress, you created the House Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare and you have been working on national security issues for more than 15 years.  What is the role of the House Taskforce?

McCOLLUM:  The House Taskforce still exists today but at the time that we created it which was in 1987, 1988 and 1989, there was no organization and there was no real interest in the radical Islamist movement that exists today.  I think some of us, three or four of us, who worked very hard at the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to help the refugees — the Afghan refugees who were in Pakistan at the time — recognized as we saw the Soviets withdraw that in the very camps that abutted the refugees they were training the ones who fought the Soviets and those camps were being converted into anti-American, anti-Western training grounds by the groups that had come there.

If you now know the history — and you read about it every day, but at that time people did not recognize that people were being brought there from Egypt and Jordan and elsewhere who were then inculcated into an organized movement.  And that organized movement was at the time directed at the Soviet Union but afterwards was directed against us.

So we began to publish every month, sometimes more than once a month, we sent our papers to the CIA and to the Defense Department and to all kinds of places and frankly people just did not listen for many years.  I went on the Intelligence Committee after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 and served six years there, and I used to sit down and talk with incredulous people there who just said they did not believe that the Shiites and Sunnis would ever work together.  Things like that.

So we had a big learning curve with people and that is how I got involved and I have stayed involved with this.  I knew who Osama bin Laden was long before September 11th.  In fact, our executive director of the Taskforce wrote a book about Osama bin Laden and it was published about two years before September 11, 2001, and nobody bought it.  Of course, it was out again in 2001, and in about a month it became a national best-seller.

GIACHINO:  We appreciate so much of the work that you have done on the issue of national security, and now we even have to expand out and say international security.  I think the United States is closely watching everything that is happening overseas.

I know that today, while I was searching the American Security Council’s website, breaking news came over that London again sealed off some streets after an incident -on-board a bus.  I don’t know whether you know anything more about that that you can relate to us, but do you think London will ever be able to exhale?

McCOLLUM:  I think you are going to continue to see the terrorist activity in Europe, and not just in London, in a way that is unacceptable to us.  We are now going to focus more on it.  It is something that is occurring because you have so many young Islamists there and they have been organized better than maybe some people have perceived before.  But, as opposed to the United States, the indigenous population is there to create some of those things.

It is going to be a long haul, this War on Terror, for all of us in the West.  And we should not forget the central purpose — the reason these acts are being performed in an organized way — the radicals are concerned with gaining control over the entire part of the Muslim world that has any large Muslim population.  And they want to impose their will and their ideas on these people and they see the United States and the West standing in their way.

They use these terrorist tactics to try to break the will of the American people and the will of our European friends in the belief that they will ultimately wear us down and we will leave them alone and let them have these countries and that part of the world.  And that is not going to happen as a practical matter, but they believe that.  As a consequence, they are causing an awful lot of grief and terror and horror, and we have to learn how to cope with this over a long, long haul.

That’s why the American Security Council believes that much of what President Bush is proposing is absolutely correct — that we have to find a way to create government structures in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, which by example can provide the people of that region both an opportunity for a better future and freedom and liberty in ways that they have never experienced before.  And let them have a way internally within the Muslim world of ultimately combating the radical elements that want to take over their lives.

It is going to be a long, long struggle.  We cannot do it alone, as people have said.  But we have to be willing to start it and work.  This is not going to be like anything that we have ever faced before.

GIACHINO:  One other piece of it — and I know that this is probably not a part of the mission of the American Security Council, but it certainly does have something to do with our national security — police throughout the world are trying to track down the planners behind the July 7th attacks in London which killed 56 people and the bungled repeat on July 21st.  I think they have already made 21 arrests, some in London and some in Italy.

The Times in London reported today that Britain is asking the U.S. CIA to interrogate terror suspects held in secret detention centers.  In the meantime, human rights groups have slammed the U.S. network of secret prisons.  Why are these human rights activists not outraged by these senseless killings and terrorist attacks?  I don’t understand why they think these “ghost prisoners” should be treated better than most U.S. citizens and even better than our U.S. prisoners being held on foreign soil.  Can you comment on this?

McCOLLUM:  I can only say that — wearing a hat other than the hat of the American Security Council — that, as a Congressman for many years and as someone who has observed, it has always befuddled me why the American Civil Liberties Union and others have taken on the causes that they have done.  It occurs to me as an American and with a fondness for the Bill of Rights and our desire for protecting individual liberty and privacy and individual rights that we all generally champion the individual.  But there is the greater interest of security that occurs at some point and our Founding Fathers in this country were wise enough to see the balance.

The question is where do you put that balance.  And it seems to me that some of these organizations in the international world — just as they have been here at home — have that balance point off the mark.  They are so absorbed with the protecting of the individual rights and the idea that the individual is supreme in all of this that they lose sight of the greater importance of the security issue that would, if lost, do away with the chance of individual rights for anybody or everybody.

So it is that which is missing here.  But you will never do away with folks who think that way.  They will always be out there.  They serve a useful purpose so long as they are not in charge.

GIACHINO:  What do you think is our greatest threat to national security today?  You talked about the American Security Council and how it is keeping track of things in Latin America and the Middle East and North Korea.  If you had to identify it, is there anything that you can identify as our greatest threat?

McCOLLUM:  Well, I do think that the radicalist Islamic movement is the greatest threat to us at this time.  If the American public will is in any way abridged through this and we were to give in to them, this could go on not only for a long time but we could lose ground on so many things that we do.  That is not to say that there are not other “hot points.”

I think Americans have been distracted — not that that has been a bad thing because we certainly need to emphasize this terrorist threat — but distracted from Latin America.  And we don’t have time to go into it today but Chavez, the President of Venezuela, has established quite a network down there.  He has recently made some relationships with al Jazeera, the television network that has given us so much trouble in the War on Terror in the Middle East.  And he has his own television going on now with oil behind it, collaborating with a lot of these radicals, and it appears to us that he is working hard to prop up the revolutionaries that have been historically associated with communists in Columbia — they are the remnants of the old Sandinistas in Nicaragua.  He has been out supporting revolutionaries in the Caribbean and in Ecuador and elsewhere who are sympathetic to him and not to us.

So there is going to be a lot more happening that we need to be very aware of in Latin America in terms not only from the standpoint that we should be interested in that region because it is so close to us, but because, if our borders remain as porous as they are and the kind of thing happens that I see happening with Chavez’s movement and he has relationships with radical Islamists, our back door becomes an even greater question mark than it is today for our own internal security.

To my way of thinking it is a very complex issue when you ask what is our greatest threat to national security.  One could argue it is a nuclear accident occurring either intentionally or otherwise from perhaps China or North Korea or a developing country.  And I think nuclear proliferation is a problem — a big problem still in the world.

But if you ask me the single greatest threat to our national security today, I would say it is the radical Islamist movement and how we define winning that war.

GIACHINO:  I recently read that you are quoted as saying that “we must also continue to promote democracy and freedom in the Islamic world to ensure that future generations will not have to deal with the terrorist threat we have today.”

McCOLLUM:  Yes, I think very much that the idea of liberty and freedom is very, very important.  It is not just a slogan — it has to do with people’s lives.  And if over time in the Islamic world the idea of individual liberty can take a foothold and gain a strong enough number of advocates who understand it — and remember many of them have not experienced it so they really don’t know what it means to have that kind of freedom — I believe that that ultimately defeats the radical Islamists.  Because this is not a war in which we are going to go by country and conventionally win that war.  It is an ideological war — it is a war for the hearts and minds of a lot of young people who are going to be recruited to do these suicide bombings and so on for a long time.

If people have government structures that are really effective and work — they don’t have to be exactly like ours, but they protect individual liberties and create property rights and create economic structures and market economies — then there will be a growth of personal prosperity and country prosperity that I think will be the only real deterrent we have.

It is a difficult vision, and it is historically one that the United States has shirked — for good reason — in the past.  Unfortunately, I believe that we are at the time and place where we have no choice but to do that and do our best to try to create that situation where individual liberty and democracy and freedom will flourish in that part of the world because that is the only way to actually win the War on Terror.

GIACHINO:  I want to again direct the listeners to the American Security Council’s website, which is ASCUSA.org.  There is a great article on the website about the information sharing that is going on between more than 6,000 state and local police officers and the FBI with regard to these terrorist threats.  In that article, Mr. McCollum, it notes that this information sharing has been held up as a model of cooperation by law enforcements.  But there are others out there who are criticizing the information-sharing program for a variety of reasons.

If I can ask you again to take off your hat as a board member of the American Security Council but instead put on the hat as a former member of Congress.  Yesterday, in our local paper there was an article about how the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office no longer will work together on cases.

Let me set this up a little bit for you.  As I understand it, the U.S. Attorney’s Office severed ties because it believes that the local sheriff and his officers have persistently violated a local federal court rule barring the release of information that is not part of the court’s public record or part of a court proceeding.  For example, the U.S. Attorney says the officers’ remarks could infringe upon a suspect’s rights, jeopardize a prosecutor’s case or taint a prospective jury pool.

I have always been a strong advocate for free speech and media access, but I recognize that there are times when that unfettered access can threaten our national security or otherwise have negative implications.  How much information do you think the public should have access to and what are your thoughts about unfettered media access and the impact it could have on national security?

McCOLLUM:  Well, there are two different issues that you have posed here.  One of them is the public access.  I think that there are times when things simply cannot be public.  You cannot have information out there that will reveal your sources and potentially get people killed or give away information that could lead to the bad guys escaping or getting away or doing whatever they are going to do.  On the other hand, you would like to believe that the local sheriffs and law enforcement officers are going to be people you can have confidence in to provide information to and that it will not be shared widely with people who should not have it.  And that goes back to an age-old debate.

I was Chairman of a crime subcommittee for six of the last years I was there and I also served on the Intelligence Committee, and I can tell you that, not only then but even more importantly now with September 11th in our wake, we have to find ways to have relationships between U.S. Attorneys’ offices and local law enforcement.  I have no idea what particularly triggered this, but there is obviously some violation of confidence that is at least perceived by the U.S. Attorney in the area.  And I truly hope that for the safety and security of the people of West Florida that we see a change in that relationship and that whatever deficiencies there are in that relationship that they get corrected.  That’s why the Homeland Security Department has a whole subdepartment about it in order to try to work out those things.

I hear every day, too, from local law enforcement that continue to say that they don’t get enough information because we are the guys on the ground who have to go out and spot the bad guys who are doing something here.  They are more likely to see that than someone else and they are not likely to know about it unless they are told about it — a terrorist cell or something like that.  They need to know what to be on the lookout for.

GIACHINO:  Yes, that was the gist of the article for the most part on the American Security Council’s website.  Again, I encourage the listeners to visit the website to learn more about how they can help and what they can do to support the effort.

That gets to my next point.  Obviously, monetary contributions are always helpful.  What other things should people be trying to do to help in any way that they can to protect our national security?

McCOLLUM:  Well, to help the American Security Council get the word out we are looking to build a membership that really does not cost people much of anything — whether that’s $5 or $10 to the Foundation in particular or to the ASC directly, because we would like to get your e-mail address.  We would like to get the word out and we would like to spread the word to people and have a real army of people so that when an issue comes up, like John Bolton’s nomination, we have throughout the nation a grassroots group that will come forward and say to their Congressman or Senators that they really want to see this happen.

There are various organizations that are organized at a grassroots level, at a political level, but very few organizations nationally.  There are none for national security or American security that have that ability to go out and rally the general public.

So one way you can help if you really are interested is to go to the website and take a look at how you can become affiliated as a member — again not to make major donations but to help us by joining and then by finding others elsewhere, not just in Pensacola or Northwest Florida, but elsewhere throughout the country who would be somebody who might join up, as well.  We need you to keep spreading the word to allow us to create this network.

At one time, there were 381,000 members of the American Security Council during the height of the Cold War.  That sort of faded with the Cold War ending and, of course, we did not have e-mail in those days and the ability to communicate was not there.

So we are re-building and really do need that kind of help.  I think that by going to the website and joining and looking and telling other people about it and getting them to come and join and be a part of this network would be the best thing that anyone can do as an individual at this point in time.

GIACHINO:  I know that you have strong military support here in Northwest Florida and I think that for the folks out there who have expressed that they feel very disenfranchised from the political arena, it is these types of grassroots organizations where you really can make a difference.

McCOLLUM:  Yes, and I want to emphasize that this is a very non-partisan organization.  We have a Congressional Advisory Board that consists of leaders in the Congress and the House particularly who are from both political parties and that does not impair our speaking out forcefully as we are.  For example, Congressman Jerry Lewis of California, who is the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, is an Advisory Board Member.  Henry Hyde, who chairs the International Relations Committee, is on the Advisory Board.  We have Duncan Hunter, who is the head of our Armed Services Committee, and a whole host those leaders.  Then we have Ike Skelton of Missouri, who is a Democrat and a leading voice there for strong national security.  We have Taylor of Mississippi and Peterson of Minnesota.

People forget that despite the fact that there are some voices that sometimes in one party or another get pretty shrill and want to block nominations like Bolton and so forth that there are good men and women in both parties who believe in strong national security.  Hopefully some of the people who listen to your show will come and join our organization and be a party to this — no matter what your politics.

GIACHINO:  That’s right.  National security is not and should not be a partisan issue.

Well, I have imposed on your time far too long.  The Honorable Bill McCollum, we thank you very much for your time this afternoon and for your service as a board member for the American Security Council and as a former member of the House of Representatives.  We wish you continued success as you practice law in Washington, D.C., and Florida with the firm of Baker & Hostetler.

McCOLLUM:  I appreciate it very much and it has been my pleasure.

GIACHINO:  Thank you very much.  We will talk with you again soon.

McCOLLUM:  Thank you.