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South Carolina Governor Admits Affair; Iowa High School Coach Killed; Blogger Gets White House Press Room Q&A; Police Shooters Cleared in New Orleans Killing

Aired June 24, 2009 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: Well, hello. Thanks, Kyra. I'm here again for Rick Sanchez.

You saw it here within the past half-an-hour. His cover is now blown. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford has admitted to an extramarital affair. This photograph emerged this morning, Governor Sanford arriving on a flight from Argentina, landing in Atlanta, to where he now admits he flew.

He went to Argentina to visit a female lover. He was not, after all, hiking by himself on the Appalachian Trail, and his staff insisted, after questions about the governor's whereabouts surfaced in earnest on Monday.

Now, before we hear from the governor, I need to point out Governor Sanford gave no indication that he plans to resign, except from the leadership of the Republican Governors Association. He is someone who was considered a contender for the presidency.

He did harbor -- if he did harbor presidential aspirations, as some have suggested, this could certainly be problematic. Here is Mark Sanford, Republican governor of South Carolina, addressing reporters a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. MARK SANFORD (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: The bottom line is this. I -- I have been unfaithful to my wife.

I developed a relationship with a -- what started as a dear, dear friend from Argentina. It began very innocently, as I suspect many of these things do, in just a casual e-mail back and forth, in advice on one's life there and advice here.

But, here, recently, over this last year, it developed into something much more than that.

And, as a consequence, I hurt her. I hurt you all. I hurt my wife. I hurt my boys. I hurt friends like Tom Davis. I hurt a lot of different folks.

And all I can say is that I apologize.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: All right, we have got a lot of coverage on this.

We have got David Mattingly in Columbia, South Carolina. We have got CNN senior correspondent Candy Crowley in Washington, and Leroy Chapman -- he is the government and political editor of "The State" -- by phone in -- Columbia as well.

Leroy, let's start with you. Your -- your newspaper is the one that -- that sort of started uncovering this. Tell us what you think of this, what you know about it.

LEROY CHAPMAN, GOVERNMENT & POLITICS EDITOR, "THE STATE": Well, what we know is that, this morning, we had reason to believe that the governor Appalachian Trail was not, in fact, on the Appalachian Trail, as his office has said, that perhaps he could be on a flight to -- from Buenos Aires to Atlanta.

So, we sent a reporter, Gina Smith, who met him at the airport. And she was the only media there to meet him, based on a few clues we put together and also a tip we got that was absolutely accurate. It took several days, of course, for his office to verify where he had been.

And, of course, that sends up an awful lot of red flags, for not only the media, but people just who are in politics who are wondering about things like the line of succession and just some transparency that the governor has always, himself, demanded of everyone else.

VELSHI: David, you spoke to the governor's wife, I believe it was yesterday. You saw her. You went up to her. And you asked her what she knew of the governor's whereabouts.

At that time, we had heard from the governor's staff that he had been hiking the Appalachian Trail and was quite surprised by the media attention he got.

What did his wife tell you?

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: His wife said -- it was only a very brief conversation. She pulled into the driveway of their summer home on the South Carolina coast. She got out of the car with her children. She immediately instructed her boys not to speak to -- to me.

And I quickly asked her a question. "Have you heard from your husband?"

And she says: "I am being a mother today. I have not heard from my husband. I am being a mother. And I am taking care of my children."

That was a very strange statement. You could read all sorts of things into it. Now, it becomes so much clearer that there was obviously problems in the home, in their relationship, that this was, indeed, a trip that she knew about and knew why her husband was taking, and that there is a lot that this family has to work out. VELSHI: And this -- and the governor did say in his comments to reporters that they have been working through this for about five months. So, his family, fortunately, did not hear about this in the news. They knew something about it.

But, ultimately, Candy Crowley, this is somebody who was talked about as a potential presidential candidate, as a potential contender. I assume that's done at this point. Or is it?

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I never say never in politics, but it is not helpful, just to understate the case here.

The problem right now for the Republican Party at large is, this is two big hits in the -- in the last month, Senator Ensign also coming forward, a Republican who was in a policy-making position in the Senate, resigning his position there, saying that he had cheated on his wife.

Obviously, what Republicans don't need is leadership caught up in this sort of -- well, really what's becoming a kind of tawdry cliche, as we watch this play out, on both sides, by the way, Democrats and Republicans.

So, it is certainly -- if there was a chance, it is really hard to envision that three-and-a-half years would be able to kind of rub this out and move on. I think some of the biggest winners -- and there can't be any winners, actually, in this particular situation -- are those Republicans with presidential aspirations who have pretty much been laying low, and not been out there in the spotlight, in particular this bad spotlight.

VELSHI: All right. And we are going to talk about what kind of memory voters have for this and what kind of capacity voters have to overcome this sort of thing when we come back.

Just to understand that we are all on the same page here, here is what happened. Sanford disappeared last Thursday. State law enforcement officials started looking for him on Friday. On Saturday, his office told police there was no cause for concern. But that's about all they said.

On Sunday, the story began spreading around political circles. And, on Monday, the governor's only wife said that she wasn't aware of her husband's whereabouts. Then, yesterday, as the story went national, the governor's staff stated that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of a sudden, some 500 people with clubs and woods, they came out of the (INAUDIBLE) mosque, and they poured into the streets, and they started beating everyone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: That is the sound of Iran at this hour. We have got new reports of a bloody crackdown.

See the man I am going to show you in this video, the one beating the woman, the 115-pound woman? That is a Chicago police officer. It turns out this beating isn't enough to send that man to prison. We have got details.

And, in New Orleans, a group of police officers cleared in a shooting incident that left the victim dead with 12 bullets in his back.

We will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: OK. As you can imagine, a lot of activity on Twitter, on Facebook, on MySpace. You can send it to Rick or to me.

Let's take a look at something that came into my Twitter now.

"The sad question" -- we're talking about the governor of South Carolina, Governor Sanford. "Sad question is, did he admit because he would have been found out or was he really trying to come clean? Who knows? Not good."

I am going to talk to Leroy Chapman from "The State" newspaper in South Carolina. They took a photograph of Governor Sanford getting off his plane from Atlanta. Was that the photograph that undid the whole situation? We will be back on that.

Now, a 250-pound guy beats up a bartender, a woman half his size. He punches her. He kicks her. It is all caught on tape. He doesn't deny it. Slam-dunk, right? Wrong. He is not going to prison. Watch this.

We showed you this outrageous video of an off-duty officer, Anthony Abbate. He testified he was drunk when he beat up the bartender, and he acted in self-defense. The verdict, guilty. The sentence, two years probation, community service, and anger management classes.

The judge says the officer has no prior criminal history and didn't cause any serious harm. The bartender says she is -- quote -- "disappointed."

When we come back, we are digging a little deeper into South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's return and his affair. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Remarkable story.

It seemed remarkable when we first started covering this, the idea that the governor of South Carolina sort of just went AWOL, disappeared. He went ostensibly hiking in the Appalachian Trail. No one had heard from him. Then we found out -- David Mattingly found out from his wife that she hadn't heard from him since Thursday. And then "The State" newspaper in South Carolina snapped a photograph of the governor getting off a plane in Atlanta -- this is the photograph right here -- a flight that had come in from Buenos Aires.

And that's where we pick this story up. Candy Crowley is with us in Washington. Leroy Chapman is a government and politics editor with "The State."

Leroy, let's start with you.

He is with us on the phone.

Leroy, if the governor wasn't snapped in that photograph, would this have carried on? Do you think he was coming clean? Or do you think that photograph and your reporter there, your photographer there, changed this whole situation?

CHAPMAN: I think we can safely say that our presence there did change the story today.

Essentially, what had been happening, if you go back to yesterday, is that the governor's office said that he had been on the Appalachian Trail, he would be back tomorrow, it is much ado about nothing. And, had we not been there, the governor probably would have arrived today and would have said, I'm here, present and accounted for. It is all a media creation.

I can only suppose that perhaps that could have happened. Now, I of course can't say that definitely. But there was no reason to believe that his story would have been any different definitely had we not exposed the fact that he was not on the Appalachian Trail, as he had said.

VELSHI: Candy, let's think about this from the point of view of everybody who doesn't live in South Carolina. Do we care? Is this now a personal human drama? Is this a problem with the way South Carolina runs things, that their governor can disappear for days on end and nobody knows where he is? Is this about the Republican Party?

CROWLEY: I think probably almost any governor could disappear if he wanted to for a while.

But the problem here, I think, is the larger Republican Party. How much of a problem, I'm not sure. But the speed with which Governor Sanford's resignation from the Republican Governors Association, from leading the Republican Governors Association, was accepted immediately.

Why? Because they want to move on. Because they want to get this story about a Republican off the front pages, out of the headlines. The same can be said for Senator John Ensign, also a Republican, who also recently admitted to an affair, who resigned from his top policy position in the Republican Party on Capitol Hill. He also resigned. Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, immediately took that resignation. Why? Because they want the story off the page. It is a party that's struggling. They don't need this sort of a distraction.

VELSHI: Yes. How do you feel about the way he handled that, then, in terms of getting it off the page? He didn't resign as governor. Remarkably candid. I have actually got tweets from people who are saying they thought he handled it very candidly.

Do you think that he has done the right thing at this point?

CROWLEY: I think he had no other choice.

This is -- this does now become sort of an intensely personal thing, particularly for his family, which wasn't elected to anything. They are part of this problem -- or they are part of this situation and certainly the larger part of it.

You have to see how it plays out. Do we now know everything? If we do know everything, then that means that Governor Sanford can stay in office. Probably his chances for 2012 are pretty slim. But he can stay in office, because he is term-limited and he is in his second term.

The question is, as it was in, say, the case of Governor McGreevey from New Jersey, where state money was used to put his lover on a payroll, Governor Spitzer, who used the services of a prostitute, he also resigned. Those are illegal things. And they tend to push people out of office.

So far, there is not any indication of something illegal in this particular circumstance.

VELSHI: Let's listen to -- let's listen to Governor Sanford in his own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANFORD: If you were to look at God's laws, they're, in every instance, designed to protect people from themselves.

I think that that is the bottom line of God's law. It is not a moral, rigid list of dos and don'ts, just for the heck of dos and don'ts. It is, indeed, to protect us from ourselves. And the biggest self of self is, indeed, self, that sin is in fact grounded in this notion of, what is it that I want, as opposed to somebody else?

And, in this regard, let me throw one more apology out there. And that is to people of faith across South Carolina or, for that matter, across the nation, because I think that one of the big disappointments, when -- believe it or not, I have been a person of faith all my life -- if somebody falls within the fellowship of believers or the walk of faith, I think it makes it that much harder for -- for believers to say, well, where was that person coming from, or folks that weren't believers to say, where indeed was that person coming from?

So, one more apology in there.

But I guess where I am trying to go with this is that there are moral absolutes, and -- and that God's law indeed is there to protect you from yourself. And there are consequences if you breach that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: Interesting that he is talking about there are moral absolutes -- absolutes. Candy was just talking about the fact that other governors she had mentioned had done things that were illegal.

I want to -- I want to go to Leroy. But I want to give you a piece of news, a development in this. Candy had just told us about how the governor had resigned from the Republican Governors Association. And that resignation was accepted immediately.

Now, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour has stepped into that role, effectively immediately. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour will now head the Republican Governors Association.

Leroy, let's go to you.

What was the political situation in South Carolina with Mark Sanford? Had he made too many enemies? You mentioned that you had a tip that he was getting off this plane. Was somebody trying to rat him out?

CHAPMAN: No, this actually just happened to be a tip from someone who had been paying attention to the news and who had been on an airplane flight. So, this was an anonymous tip from just an air passenger.

But just in terms of Mark Sanford and his relationship with the General Assembly in the state, it has been very contentious over the past eight years. And this predates the stimulus debate. There are a lot of Republicans in his own party who had not been in league with the governor.

In fact, he just issued a bunch of vetoes. One veto would have given him more control of our state's sports authority. There are 170 members of the General Assembly. He got 12 votes to override. So, that just gives you an indication of just how far his support had waned in the General Assembly.

VELSHI: What a remarkable story.

Leroy, thank you very much for being with us.

Leroy Chapman is government and politics editor at "The State" in South Carolina, Candy Crowley in D.C.

And Candy will be staying on this story. David Mattingly will be staying on this story. We will be following the developments as they come along, although the biggest development is the one we got earlier, Mark Sanford admitting to an extramarital affair.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of my friends, we were going to Baharestan to express our opposition to these killings, these deaths, and demanding freedom.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: Desperation in the moments after a reported bloody crackdown in Iran, a new one. We will have more on that.

Richard Nixon uncensored. We have got some incredibly revealing audio recordings of the former president. We will have that for you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Take a look at the Big Board. Spent most of the day in positive territory, now giving up a little bit more. This market has started to pull back.

Today, we heard from the Federal Reserve this afternoon. This would typically be their interest rate decision. But they can't do anything about interest rates, because they are so low already. They're keeping interest rates unchanged. But the Federal Reserve says it sees the pace of slowdown shrinking. It sees this economy perhaps starting to stabilize. And they are saying, don't worry about these commodity prices, including oil prices that are going up. It is not enough to stop this recovery just yet.

But that -- that didn't help markets out too much. Markets are down right now. We will check in at the bottom of the hour -- or at the top of the hour again, as markets close.

All right. We are not going to solve any mysteries here or uncover anything we don't already know. But we have been listening to a batch of audiotapes that have just been released by the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, 154 hours of recordings.

We like this tape. But don't worry. I just want to share a few seconds with you. Listen to this. It is the famously untrusting President Nixon ordering a detailed log of Henry Kissinger's phone calls.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

RICHARD NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want it on his private phone, too. We can get that, can't we?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we can.

(CROSSTALK)

NIXON: Sure. We get it through the FBI.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes, yes, yes, OK.

NIXON: The FBI is to get -- keep the log on his phone.

(CROSSTALK)

NIXON: That's all we want to know, who the hell he calls.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

VELSHI: Kissinger at the time was Nixon's national security adviser. This is his guy he wants to listen to on tape.

Another tape, this is the president on the phone with George H.W. Bush, the future president, who was then the Republican National Committee chairman. Listen to Nixon to tell Bush to get more good- looking women to run for Republican office.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

NIXON: I want you to be sure to emphasize to our people, my God, let's look for, because I -- I don't do it because I'm for women, but I'm doing it because I think maybe a woman might win someplace where a man might not. So, have you got that in mind?

GEORGE H.W. BUSH, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I will certainly keep it in mind, sir.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

VELSHI: All right, and one more. This is Nixon and evangelist Billy Graham. It's 1973. The news of the day is the shoot-down of a Libyan jetliner by Israel. Listen to this.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

REVEREND BILLY GRAHAM, EVANGELIST: The lord is with you. (INAUDIBLE)

(CROSSTALK)

NIXON: You know, we have got certainly the problems. Isn't that a horrible thing, those Israelis shooting down that plane?

(CROSSTALK)

NIXON: I have just been -- I have just been raising the devil about that, because, I mean, it was so stupid. It was so stupid. I mean, to shoot down an unarmed 707, good heavens, that's worst than what they did at the Olympics, the other side.

GRAHAM: Well, this will be an embarrassment for her coming here next week, won't it?

NIXON: Well, I think it is, yes.

But, on the other hand, that's going to be her embarrassment, not ours. We didn't do it.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

VELSHI: All right, it's the fifth time that the Nixon Library has released -- released a batch of audiotapes.

You can browse them at the library's Web site, nixonlibrary.gov.

OK, still to come: A high school coach dies after being shot on school property. We will have the details.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Bringing you developments from Iran today puts us in a -- kind of a tough spot. We here at CNN cannot absolutely confirm that what we are told happened today.

We don't know that it really did. But our sources there, people whom we trust, tell us that riot police, hundreds of them, attacked a crowd of protesters in Tehran today, beating them with clubs and sending more blood on to the streets.

Listen to this interview. It is CNN's Ivan Watson, who has been on this beat. He is talking to our source in Tehran during that violent attack.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was 5:30.

I was going towards Baharestan with my friends. And this was everyone, not only just supporters of one candidate or the other. Everyone, all of my friends, we were going to Baharestan to express our opposition to these killings these days and demanding freedom.

But the black-clad police, they stopped everyone at Sadi (ph). They let -- they emptied the buses that were taking people there and let the private cars go on.

And we went on until (INAUDIBLE) and, then, all of a sudden, some 500 people with clubs and woods, they came out of the (INAUDIBLE) mosque, and they poured into the streets, and they started beating everyone. And they started beating everyone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: Wow, that is filled with emotion.

You spoke to this woman. As we said, hard for us to confirm. But we have sources there who you understand to -- to be able to verify that this happened today.

IVAN WATSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ali, we have more than a half- dozen accounts describing police baton charges, police chasing hundreds of young Iranians through the streets, beating them, blood in the street, pepper spray, helicopters overhead. No question that something really violent happened today in downtown Tehran when they tried to stage this opposition protest.

This is Iranian state-funded Press TV's version of what took place today. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A number of people gathered in front of Iran's parliament to protest the results of the election have been dispersed by security forces. Some 200 protesters gathered in small groups at a nearby subway station in Baharestan Square. Another group of about 50 people converged on another square to the north of that neighborhood.

The gathering was planned in advance. A heavy presence of police prevented violence in the area. Traffic was light and the police controlled all the routes to and from the areas surrounding the parliament.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: And Ali, you know, one of my sources sent me a note saying, "They beat the people like animals. I see many people with broken arms, legs, heads. Blood everywhere. They were in waiting for us."

VELSHI: The information flow has changed in the few days that we have been covering this. It's harder to get coverage, but Press TV talked about 200 people gathering in this particular square and another 50 people. So there are enough facts corroborated on all sides that we know there was a gathering. We know there was a police presence.

What are you finding in terms of the information flow? It's just harder to get to people.

WATSON: It's very hard. And as you can see, Iranian state TV showing pretty placid scenes on the streets.

VELSHI: Sure, as opposed to this sort of scene, which we are seeing a lot of.

WATSON: And we have seen demonstrators shot in cold blood, bleeding out on the streets. By the Iranian official figures, 17 people have been killed over the last 11 days.

Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog organization, is calling Iran the world's biggest prison for journalists. At least 26 reporters detained since June 14th. Many more -- these Iranian reporters -- gone into hiding. And you've had Iran's most famous human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. She is calling for the Iranian regime to release what we believe are hundreds and hundreds of people, activists who have been detained, many of them from their homes late at night over the past week and a half. VELSHI: Here's something interesting. There has been a lot of discussion about the U.S. government and its position in meddling versus not meddling. We have information now that the president had been in contact in some fashion with the ayatollah prior to the election.

What can you tell us about this?

WATSON: I'm going to have to pass on that one right now, Ali. We have been trying to chase this one down.

VELSHI: Right.

WATSON: And I just confess, I'm not updated.

VELSHI: All right. We're going to find out whether there had been some discussion. We are just trying to get some details on whether there had been some discussion with the administration prior to the election.

Now, what do we think happens next? Do we have any sense of what happens next? Because I know you and your team have been on top of this thing sort of on a minute-by-minute basis.

Is there some sense of -- is there a crescendo? Is there something else happening? Is the government getting the upper hand and causing people to stay home? We understand they have been actually taking people's cell phones away so as to prevent the kind of stuff that we're seeing on TV.

WATSON: Well, these demonstrators cannot compete with the overwhelming force of the Islamic Republic of Iran. They just can't. And we do know that the opposition leaders, they don't have access to state-funded television.

In fact, we have gotten statements from one spokesman for the second place candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, saying that he is being watched like a hawk now by secret police. He really has to watch his mouth.

What is certain is that something has changed in Iran over the past week and a half, that the legitimacy of the government has been seriously challenged, and this has taken on a life of its own. And they can beat these people all they want. That doesn't make them any more popular. Can they live with them by clubbing them day after day?

VELSHI: And I was having a very long conversation with your team -- members of your team, who were explaining the technology of what's going on, that the attempts to shut down technology are sort of being outdone by the fact that there is too much going on. There are people around the world trying to keep access, at least an information flow.

So thank you for the work you are doing, Ivan.

Ivan and our Iran desk continue to stay on top of this situation and bring us everything as it comes along. Well, listen, how can police shoot a man in the back 12 times and be cleared of any wrongdoing? We're going to investigate.

But next, we are staying with Iran. And a man credited with some of the best coverage of the post-election turmoil, he has come under some questions after yesterday's White House press briefing. "Huffington Post" correspondent Nico Pitney joins me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: This is one of those "in case you missed it" moments. President Obama's White House press room, it's your standard news conference arrangement. Here come the questions. But something was very different yesterday.

After his first answer, the president pointed to someone who does not represent the so-called mainstream media. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK H. OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, on Iran, I know Nico Pitney is here from "Huffington Post."

NICO PITNEY, "HUFFINGTON POST": Thank you, Mr. President.

OBAMA: Nico, I know that you and all across the Internet, we have been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet.

Do you have a question?

PITNEY: Yes, I did, but I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions last night from people who were still courageous enough to be communicating online. And one of them wanted to ask you this: "Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working towards?

OBAMA: Well, look...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: All right. Nico is with us now. He's the national editor of "The Huffington Post."

Nico, thank you for being with us.

And first of all, I think we all owe you a debt of gratitude for the remarkable work that you have done in covering what's going on in Iran very constantly. You have been blogging about it. You are getting access to remarkable information, and I suspect that that is part of the role that got you into that press room. It did look a little weird to some of us, and apparently weirder to other people who have been writing about it. They feel like it was a setup. They feel like that was staged by the White House.

What do you have to say about that?

PITNEY: It wasn't staged. I think that's a very poor choice of words considering that virtually anyone beyond the broadcast networks and the wires who is called on at one of these events is told beforehand that a question may be coming.

You know, everyone knows that, because President Obama says their name. It's not as if he is pulling it out of the air or everyone is raising their hands. So this is fairly standard practice and I think...

VELSHI: So you were there by prior arrangement, obviously, because you don't just walk into the White House. And there was some sense -- did you know for sure you were getting a question or you assumed that you were?

PITNEY: No, I didn't know for sure, but I had written on the live blog on "The Huffington Post" that if I did get called on, I would ask a question from an Iranian. And I had spent quite a bit of time trying to field as many questions as possible.

VELSHI: So the president didn't know the question that you were going to ask?

PITNEY: No, no. The White House didn't ask. I obviously wouldn't have told them if they had.

VELSHI: All right. Very good.

Nico, I want to ask you about something that I was talking to Ivan Watson about. We have heard some word that the president had been in touch with the ayatollah in Iran before the election. What do you know about this?

PITNEY: So, "The Washington Times" reported and apparently Christiane Amanpour confirmed today that a letter was sent. "The Washington Times" say it was about bilateral relations between the two countries, that it mentioned the nuclear issue. And it seems pretty consistent with the tact that Obama has taken so far.

He has had those two issues in the lead in terms of how he's been trying to engage Iran. It seems like it was an under-the-radar effort to establish some kind of link with the supreme leader. You know, it's also in line with the idea that the Obama administration doesn't seem eager to interact at all with Ahmadinejad. It doesn't see him as the key power player.

And, you know, in Iran's governmental structure, he doesn't have that authority. So he's going above and beyond Ahmadinejad, to the supreme leader. VELSHI: All right. Nico, thank you very much for that. Thanks for joining us. And continued good work on getting us as much information out of Iran.

PITNEY: Thank you.

VELSHI: I have to tell you all that it is a real challenge to get good, accurate information out of Iran. Many people are putting their lives on the line to get us information, and it's important to keep that information flow going. But it's hard to do that and make sure that we keep everybody who is telling us things safe.

A New Orleans police officer shot a man 12 times in the back. After an internal investigation, it was found that they did nothing wrong. Now, does that sound right?

We investigate next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: To New Orleans now, where police have wrapped up an investigation into the shooting death of a young man on New Year's Day. Officers shot him 14 times, mostly in the back. The man's mother says she is haunted by the gunshots.

CNN's Sean Callebs has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The family of Adolph Chris Grimes refuses to sit silently after New Orleans police cleared its own officers in the shooting death of the 22-year-old.

PATRICIA GRIMES, SHOOTING VICTIM'S MOTHER: I'll be damned if my child will die in vein. I'll be damned. That ain't going to happen like that. Ain't no way in the world.

CALLEBS: Grimes was the first person to die by gunfire in New Orleans this year, shot just a few hours after the city rang in the new year. It took the NOPD more than five months to wrap up its investigation, an investigation that held no surprise for the Grimes family.

ADOLPH GRIMES, SHOOTING VICTIM'S FATHER: We knew they weren't going against their own. We didn't expect anything else from them.

COHEN: The Orleans Parish coroner says Grimes was shot 14 times, including 12 times in the back. At least seven officers were involved.

Grimes had driven from Houston, where he lived, to New Orleans to be with his family on New Year's Eve. Sometime after 2:00 in the morning, he had just walked to his car from his grandmother's house when the shooting occurred.

Undercover narcotics officers were in the area looking for drug dealers. Police say Grimes fired first. The family admits Grimes had a gun and a permit for the weapon, but the family doesn't believe Grimes shot at cops first, saying he had never been in trouble with the law.

Michael Glasser is head of the police union.

MICHAEL GLASSER, NEW ORLEANS POLICE UNION: We understand that anytime someone is killed and the individual seems to be an individual of good character, and it seems to be a questionable circumstances, or perhaps it seems that there was -- they were overly aggressive, and that appearance could certainly be there, there is going to be some passion behind it.

Ali, thanks very much. Happening now, a lot of breaking news we're following. Protesters in Iran beaten and bloodied for defying a government crackdown. This hour, brand-new video just coming in to the situation room. It gives us a fuller account of a potential revolution in the works and Iran's terrifying response.

And Iran keeps trying to pin the blame on the west. Alleged confessions of protesters who say they will say anything once they're influenced by what's going on and the fear of their families. The government says they're influenced by the foreign media.

CALLEBS: The New Orleans Police Department didn't return our calls or e-mails. But Glasser says it's telling that all police officers at the scene -- men, women, black and white -- felt the same threat at the same time on that dark street in the early morning hours.

GLASSER: They all act exactly the same way at the same moment. They all perceive the same threat. They all react exactly the same way at exactly the same moment. It is unlikely that that is wrong.

CALLEBS: But while the NOPD may have cleared its officers, federal authorities have not. Yet. The FBI investigation goes on.

Robert Jenkins is the Grimes' family attorney.

ROBERT JENKINS, GRIMES' FAMILY ATTORNEY: They are doing a thorough investigation. They want to make sure that when they do this, their hands are clean. We think that there is going to be at a time when many of them are going to be arrested and indicted at the same time. So we are quite pleased with the way it's going.

GLASSER: There are people that are going to believe what they want to believe. And there is no amount of convincing that will make any difference.

CALLEBS: Glasser firmly believes the feds will take their information to a grand jury. The question is whether any officers will be indicted.

The Grimes family says they have tried to talk to superintendent of police Warren Riley, but to no avail. Riley held a news conference to announce the cops have been cleared but has refused to provide paperwork from the investigation such as gunshot residue and chain of command.

The family has a lot of questions but few answers.

P. GRIMES: There ain't a day that don't go by that I don't think about my child, not a minute. And just that right there is just the idea that just rolls back in my head the way they killed my child, because I can hear it all, because I can hear the shots.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: Sean's now live in New Orleans with us.

Sean, the New Orleans PD cleared the shooters. The FBI, as you said, still on the case. Why? Are they looking at different evidence?

CALLEBS: Same evidence probably. We don't know what the federal agents are looking at. And to be honest with you, we don't know exactly what the NOPD did. They aren't providing any information.

We've made several calls, e-mails. Nothing from them.

But clearly what they are going to be looking at, ballistics information, and there's going to be a lot of it. Was there gun powder residue on Grimes' hand? Now, the NOPD superintendent, Riley, says there was some gun powder residue. But where?

We haven't seen that report. That's tight-lipped. They're not saying much.

VELSHI: All right, Sean. Good to talk to you. Thank you so much for that reporting.

A man walks into a high school weight room and shoots the football coach. The coach dies. Did they know each other?

That story next.

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When 17-year- old Drew Forde plays his viola, he says he is communicating his feelings.

DREW FORDE , MUSICIAN: It's magical. It's a magical effect that just lifts all of your worries away. It's amazing.

O'BRIEN: What's amazing is Drew started playing the viola just six years ago after some encouragement from his middle school teacher.

FORDE: When I first started out, it was rough. It was really rough. I really had to work at it.

O'BRIEN (on camera): Your teacher said you had natural talent. FORDE: I didn't feel that I had natural talent.

O'BRIEN: You didn't?

FORDE: No. I just went home and practiced, practiced every day.

O'BRIEN (voice-over): All that practice hasn't gotten him into Carnegie Hall yet, but it did get him into the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's Talent Development Program, which identifies and nurtures gifted young black and Latino musicians.

AZIRA HILL, FOUNDER, TALENT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM: We had some that really needed help.

O'BRIEN: Azira Hill is a lifelong music lover. She founded the program 15 years ago after first wondering why there were so few faces of color like hers in symphony audiences.

HILL: Then we found out that there had only been a few musicians all around the country in any symphony orchestra.

O'BRIEN (on camera): Who were black or Latino?

HILL: Who were black or Latino.

O'BRIEN (voice-over): Through the program, Drew gets free lessons from master teachers, tuition at summer music camps, opportunities his single mother says she never could have provided herself.

KIM FORDE, DREW'S MOTHER: No, it would not have happened. It definitely wouldn't. And, I mean, even if we did get a teacher, we wouldn't get one from, like, the Atlanta Symphony.

O'BRIEN: The president of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra says the program creates a pipeline that she hopes will help orchestras become as diverse as the communities in which they play.

ALLISON VULGAMORE, PRESIDENT & CEO, ATLANTA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: This isn't about community service. This is absolutely about changing the face of American orchestras on stage.

O'BRIEN: Right now, there aren't a lot of faces like Drew's on those stages, but he says it only takes opportunity like the one he has been given.

D. FORDE: It shows you minorities can do it, too. And we are not second rate. We can do anything.

O'BRIEN: Soledad O'Brien, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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VELSHI: Our breaking news this hour, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford has ended speculation as to his whereabouts by returning to his state and admitting to an extramarital affair. Sanford vanished last Thursday. One of the first people to raise questions about the governor's whereabouts was state senator Jake Knotts.

Senator Knotts joins us now from Columbia, South Carolina.

Senator, what's your reaction to the governor's admission that he was having an affair?

JAKE KNOTTS (R), SOUTH CAROLINA STATE SENATE: Well, I hate that he had to go into detail and have that type of admission, but I think that it took a strong man to stand there and do what he did. I saw Mark Sanford today that I felt was sincere in his apology to South Carolina, to the nation, and to his wife and family and friends. And I accept his apology.

And, you know, I knew something was wrong with the governor last Saturday, whenever I first reported this because I was concerned for his safety and his welfare. And obviously, he had some time to think about things. And I think that the decision that he made today is the start of a decision that he's going to have to sit down and take some real thought in the coming months.

VELSHI: Senator, very quickly, about 30 seconds, should he stay governor, or should he be removed from office, or should he resign?

KNOTTS: Well, that's a decision that the governor is going to have to take. He's going to have to decide whether he has the time to work with the problems that South Carolina has with our schools and our unemployment and jobs, and I think that he is going to have to also put his family first if he can reconcile his family.

He's going to have to decide that for himself. I hope that in the end that his family will benefit from whatever decision he makes.

VELSHI: Do you think you're going to hear calls from your colleagues for his resignation or his impeachment?

KNOTTS: Well, you're going to hear them. I've already had some calls in my office. But, you know, people have to be considerate and they have to understand that life has problems, and you have to work with people to help them with their problems. And personal problems are greater than any political problem you can have. And it will certainly attribute to the decisions that he's going to have to make in the future.

I wish him well, and he's got a wonderful wife and family.

VELSHI: Thank you, Senator.

Senator Jake Knotts joining us from Columbia, South Carolina.

This conversation will obviously continue, the implications for the Republican Party, for the state of South Carolina, and for Governor Mark Sanford.

That conversation will continue right now actually in "THE SITUATION ROOM."

Let's take you to Washington where Wolf Blitzer is standing by.