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Rand Paul Drops Objection to CIA Nominee; Lions Kills California Woman

Aired March 07, 2013 - 15:00   ET

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


BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

News is breaking live right here on CNN. I hope you saw this. Senator Rand Paul, he is -- you know him from the 13-hour filibuster, an exclusive interview with CNN's chief congressional correspondent, Dana Bash, just this past hour on our show. He is now dropping opposition to a key Cabinet appointment.

He said he has gotten what he wanted from the White House on domestic drone policy. Take a look. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We just showed the senator. He just actually saw this letter from Eric Holder moments ago. We watched it happen. His aide finally got it and gave it to him.

Senator, it is literally three sentences long. And he says that the answer to your question about can Americans be killed on U.S. soil, and the answer is no. Are you satisfied?

SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: I'm quite happy with the answer and I'm disappointed it took a month-and-a-half and a root canal to get it, but we did get the answer. And that's what I have been asking all along.

And it really is what the Senate should be about, advise and consent and find out what policies are. I have a feeling since this was so difficult that I never would have gotten this with routine letter to the White House. So, through the advise and consent process, I have gotten an important answer.

This means that if you live in America, your Fifth Amendment is not something that is optional. If someone wants to arrest you, if you are not involved in combat in our combat, what he is saying now publicly is no president, because I think the words bind everyone, not just this president, but it's the understanding of the presidency that they can't kill people without some kind of due process.

BASH: So, just to be clear, you are announcing right here on CNN that you are going to let John Brennan's nomination now go through; maybe they could even hold a vote today?

PAUL: Yes. We will hold it as soon as people want to now. Really, the whole thing is not just to be spiteful to hold up things. Sometimes, people get the misimpression that, oh, you are doing things just because you don't like the president. I have actually voted for several of the president's nominees.

BASH: Including Chuck Hagel.

PAUL: Including Chuck Hagel. But have I asked for information, which I think is this give-and-take of trying to get information, which is important.

But I think letting the vote go really is inconsequential. I won't make people wait until Saturday.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That was Senator Rand Paul speaking live on CNN right around this time last hour.

Want to go back to our chief congressional correspondent, Dana Bash who nabbed that breaking interview with Senator Paul.

And, Dana Bash, surprise, surprise, a happy ending in Washington.

BASH: Exactly.

And not just that, surprise, surprise, when there are happy endings, they tend to happen extremely quickly here in Congress because people, especially on a Thursday afternoon, want to get out of town. So we understand that the votes for John Brennan will happen in about 15 minutes, so about an hour after Senator Paul told us on this very show that he was going to lift his objections and even stop the filibuster and let John Brennan's nomination go through.

We expect a series of votes, one on the procedural measure and then one on the actual confirmation, in this hour, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Dana Bash, excellent job today. Thank you so much. We will watch for that vote.

I want to now bring in Gloria Borger, our political analyst.

And this was quite the drama unfolding when it was pitting Senator Paul against some leaders, some senior leaders within his own party. Here was John McCain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: To somehow allege or infer that the president of the United States is going to kill somebody like Jane Fonda or someone who disagrees with the policies is a stretch of imagination which is frankly ridiculous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So, Gloria, we are talking folks, senior folks like John McCain, Lindsey Graham. And then you have this freshman senator Rand Paul, Dana says happy ending, let's move on. But might the have political ramifications and repercussions for this freshman senator from Kentucky?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It just shows you the split in the Republican Party.

John McCain is an old-time, pro-defense, pro-military senator and he believes that what Senator Paul was asking for was really self-evident and that it in fact belittled what I think he thinks is the main issue in listening to him and I think he believes the main issue is the question of transparency and how people in the Senate who are on the Intelligence Committees or maybe even on Armed Services ought to be able to know how and why the government makes the decision to drop drones when it does drop drones.

And I think that's what John McCain would like to hear more about from the administration. It is very clear to me that he thought this was already evident and Eric Holder made it even more evident today by specifically saying what he said.

But I think that McCain believes that is a side issue that was maybe done for show and that we should move on to the more important things.

BALDWIN: I believe looking back in recent history we haven't seen a filibuster of this magnitude, 13 hours talking there on the Senate floor in quite a while. Let's just listen again to Senator Paul.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: It's not easy. My feet were hurting by the end of the day. You can't leave the floor and you can't sit down. So, you can't use the restroom or do anything like that.

BASH: And you were told that? Did your staff or did the parliamentarians say...

PAUL: It's just sort of a rule that is kind of known. And the staff knows the rules better a lot of times than the senators do. So they gave me the advice on what we could so.

And there's staff in there that works for the Republican side and the Democrat side. They inform you what you can and can't do. Then you have to ask a question. People can ask a question to you, but there is a certain protocol or you lose the floor.

The Democrats will leave somehow down to see if you make a mistake on the floor to take it back from you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Gloria, I'm going to go there. I know 2016 seems a world away,but we know Senator Paul has not ruled out throwing his hat in the ring. Has he with this filibuster upped his stature?

BORGER: Sure, I think he has. And I think that maybe baton has been passed from father to son. I think he gets a lot of national recognition for what he has done. Personally whether you agree with him or disagree with him, what he did was refreshing.

We don't very often get to hear somebody stand up on the Senate floor and talk about what he actually believes, because what this was about was about here's what I'm afraid of. Here's what I believe. Here's what I want to hear from the administration. He took it directly to people who might be his supporters. Then you saw other senators supporting him and this morning we heard from John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who didn't.

But how about having a really interesting controversy a very important constitutional question about drones and how they are used and how we decide to use them?

BALDWIN: And got a response very quickly from the White House.

BORGER: He did.

BALDWIN: Two sentences in this letter from Eric Holder.

Gloria, Gloria Borger, thank you.

BORGER: Sure.

BALDWIN: Because of all of this, right to the filibuster and the talking was holding up the vote for the president's pick for CIA director, we can now tell you, as Dana was reporting, that vote is now under way and here we have live pictures Senate floor for John Brennan.

As soon as we get any kind of vote results, we will pass that along to you, but again obviously winning the major in the Senate Intelligence to then go on to the full vote.

Moving on, North Korea, a country on edge today as the U.N. Security Council votes unanimously for tougher sanctions. The communist nation is ratcheting up its fiery rhetoric, and , again, the U.S. the latest target here. North Korea now vowing to launch a preemptive nuclear attack, saying Washington will be engulfed in a -- and I'm quoting them -- "sea of fire."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ROBERT MENENDEZ (D), NEW JERSEY: There should be no doubt about our determination, willingness and capability to neutralize and counter any threat that North Korea may present.

I don't think that the regime in Pyongyang wants to commit suicide, but that as they must surely know, that would be the result of any attack on the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: All of this as North Korea threatens to cancel a 60-year cease-fire that ended the Korean War.

Now to a story with two pictures we are going to show you here. It will absolutely shock you. I'm talking about a man by the name of Stephen Slevin. This was the before. This is his nightmare. It began in 2005 when he was arrested for drunk driving in New Mexico. Never had a trial. Never saw a judge.

But, for 22 excruciatingly long months, this is who he became, locked away in a county jail in a padded cell in solitary confinement 22 months for a crime he was never convicted of.

Now justice. He has just been awarded $15.5 million by that New Mexico county. But the end of his legal battle comes as he is now facing a new fight, lung cancer.

CNN's Victor Blackwell is here.

And it's just the before and the after.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Shock is the right word.

BALDWIN: Shock is the right word, 22 months. The guy is so neglected, he had some sort of infected tooth sitting in his cell, yanks it himself.

BLACKWELL: Because he didn't have access to a dentist.

BALDWIN: How did it happen?

BLACKWELL: Well, I have had a conversation with the spokesperson for Dona Ana County. This is where this happened in New Mexico.

And he admits, yes, this was a failure of the prison officials, but also a failure of the legal community, because no trial date was ever set and no attorneys ever came for him. So, he sat in that cell starting in August of 2005 and the details are enough to turn your stomach. Fungus grew on his face. His toenails grew around his foot.

And he wrote letters to the medical officials inside the prison and said the pain is unbearable. I'm having to four to five anxiety attacks a day. And there were reports that, yes, he is having troubles, but there was never any medical attention.

So, at some point, he was released after the charges were dropped because he couldn't stand trial. His health had deteriorated at that point. He sued, originally was awarded $22 million. That was dropped to $15.5 million.

Listen to Stephen Slevin on the day he was awarded that settlement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN SLEVIN, WON SETTLEMENT: Walking by me every day watching me deteriorate day after day after day and did nothing, nothing at all to get me any help. I wanted people to know that the people that had thrown me in Dona Ana County jail that are doing things like this to people and getting away with it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: He looks so much older in that picture. We know he is battling lung cancer. What about when he was arrested? What was his state then, his condition then?

BLACKWELL: Well, the charge initially was DWI. And there was a report of an open container, but we have to say he was never convicted.

So, we can't say that that was absolutely what happened. We know that he had suffered with depression over his life and that that was the reason he was put into this administrative segregation essentially just in a cell alone.

We should also say as relates to his cancer, he has been going through chemo. He's responding well to the treatments. First payment of $12 million happens either today or tomorrow, but the question is how long will he live to enjoy that money? Because thus far he has outlived the prognosis for this lung cancer.

BALDWIN: Wow. Does he have family?

BLACKWELL: He does have family, one sister who he actually wrote to while he was in prison, but his there tells me that did not want to worry her, so he did not mention the difficulties as it relates to his health in those letters.

BALDWIN: Wow. What are a story. Victor Blackwell, thank you so much.

BLACKWELL: Yes. Sure.

BALDWIN: A big fish in al Qaeda here. In fact, the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden has landed in U.S. custody and is now on U.S. soil. His name is Suleiman Abu Ghaith. It's a name well-known with the terrorist underground. He was reportedly captured in Turkey and he will make his first appearance in a U.S. court tomorrow. Big, big win there.

Fresh into his retirement, President Obama's former CIA director and defense secretary is getting candid about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Here is Leon Panetta.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEON PANETTA, FORMER U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: He was one of those moments that I will never forget, because we were sitting in the Situation Room and the president of the United States is asking everybody pretty much on the National Security Council, what would you do, what would you do knowing what we know? And there were a lot of different views. When he got to me, I said, you know, Mr. President, the one test I have always used in my public life is to basically say if I had the average citizen here and I told him what we knew, what would they want us to do? And I said, when I ask myself that question, I think most Americans would say, you got to do this. You have to find out if he's there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Panetta also reiterated they had no specific information that bin Laden was in fact inside the compound to begin with.

How did this happen? A 24-year-old young woman mauled to death by a lion?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She just loved -- this was her dream come true, working with big cats all day long, nothing but big cats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Her father wants to know why she was inside this lion's cage. Plus, hear his chilling premonition. We will take you there live next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: The father of a woman mauled to death by a lion had an eerie premonition about her death. This is video of that same lion that killed Dianna Hanson yesterday.

Hanson stepped into his cage where the lion turned on her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I always feared this. I always feared it happened, but yet this was her dream. She was living her dream down there. She was so happy working with her big cats, just loved it.

She and I drove down there on January 1, drove down to California from Seattle and got down there and then she showed me the place and showed me all the big cats. She had already visited them once. And she showed me the lion and Cous Cous, the one that killed her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That lion had no record of overly aggressive behavior prior to yesterday's attack.

And authorities say after the lion attacked, another employee tried to distract it away from Hanson, but failed. A sheriff's deputy shot and killed that lion.

Ted Rowlands is live in Dunlap, California, here.

Ted, the big question was why was she in the cage in the first place? Do we know?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

No, not yet, Brooke. Dale Anderson, the founder of the sanctuary here, he has been going in and out today and I had a chance to talk to him this morning. He said he just can't answer questions until the initial investigation is complete. We expect that will happen in the next few hours and then he says he will provide some more detail.

Clearly, that is the big question. Even her father had that same question this morning, saying that why was my daughter in this enclosure? Her going in there, was this protocol? And clearly talking to experts in the field, she shouldn't have been in that situation, that dangerous situation which, of course, took her life.

BALDWIN: I know that her family has spoken out saying she died doing what made her happy.

So, does that mean they won't press charges or not necessarily?

ROWLANDS: You know, it's shocking to hear someone so quickly, her father saying that, my gosh, my daughter, a 24-year-old little girl basically dead. And he's already saying to remember her, please contribute to places like this.

There doesn't seem to be any animosity from the family at this point. That could change when more details come out. But at this point, they are saying, you know what? She did die doing what she loved and to remember her people should support these types of places.

BALDWIN: Still, 24 years of age, it is sad all the way around.

Ted Rowlands, thank you.

We should point out the father of this lion-mauling victim will be on tonight with Erin Burnett, "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT," first national TV interview. Watch 7:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

Moments ago, billionaire Bill Gates talked to CNN about the future of technology and his thoughts on Yahoo!'s you can't work at home policy. Don't miss this next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Now to CNN's exclusive interview with Microsoft founder Bill Gates. He is talking out today. He's talking about education and how we need to make learning more suitable to where technology is going.

Laurie Segall is in Austin, Texas, right now, where Bill Gates is the keynote speaker at a conference there today.

You sat down and you spoke with this billionaire. Who are some of his big ideas?

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I did. And he has helped developing countries all the time. And what he is really focusing on now is helping education in the United States. He says there is a lot of room for disruptions. And how will he do it? He said technology can really change this sort of thing.

We asked him a lot of questions. One thing we asked him was, what's the future of college going to look like? What is a college? You have these prices that are really high and listen to what he had said to say about the future of college.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL GATES, FOUNDER, MICROSOFT: These large lecture classes, being there physically doesn't really add much value. I would guess that a decade out, there would be very few large lecture classes given and that certainly the public schools would focus more on how they take not their own lectures, but the very best that are out there and creates the labs and study groups around those.

And, yes, school will have to change because people will go and say, look, we want you to enroll twice as many kids, but your budget will not go up very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: You asked also him. This is what I wanted to hear. There has been much, much ado about Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer recently saying no to people who wanted to continue working from home, no more telecommuting. What did Bill Gates say about that?

SEGALL: Sure. I know we have spoken extensively about this, a lot of controversy over what Marissa has been saying or her new ban.

And I said, look, education is moving out of the classroom. Does that mean work is moving out of the office? I said to Bill, I said, are we going to be more productive -- are we more productive when it comes to being in the office? Listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GATES: It depends very much on the job category.

The general trend has been to give employees more flexibility. And so that specific example is somewhat countertrend. It doesn't -- you don't want to go to the total extreme. A lot of jobs require face-to- face collaboration.

But if you have got development centers all over the world and you have got a sales force that is out with the customers, the fact that tools like Skype and digital collaboration are letting people work better at a distance, that is a wonderful thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SEGALL: So, Brooke, it doesn't sound like he in completely agreement with Marissa Mayer, although he didn't really say it outwardly, but he does say these new tools for innovation, they are going to help, whether it's in the office or in the classroom -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Yes. And, clearly, as he points out, it depends on the job, whether you can stay home or you should head to the office.

SEGALL: Sure.

BALDWIN: Laurie Segall, thank you so much.

Coming up next, we have some news on everyone and everything, including, speaking of, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Meyer back in the news today because of this big bonus. Plus, Taylor Swift, now she is making money for flipping houses?

Also, a former Soviet soldier missing in Afghanistan for 33 years has been found. And we will tell you how to make a sandwich in space. The power block is next.

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