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Riots Erupt Again in Missouri over Police Shooting; U.S. Air Strikes Target ISIS Militants near Mosul Dam; Rick Perry Indicted for Abuse of Power; President Criticized for Vacationing; Robin Williams' Suicide Possible Linked to Parkinson's Disease; CNN Hero Reunites Soldiers with Dogs

Aired August 16, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Well, I hope that, being a Saturday, you got to wake up on your own with no alarm.

I'm Christi Paul. Good morning to you, here form Atlanta.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Victor Blackwell, live in Ferguson, Missouri. Ten o'clock on the East Coast, 9 here in Ferguson. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

PAUL: Victor, I miss you here in the studio, but so glad that you're there covering everything going on in Ferguson, because there has been breaking news there overnight, as looters hit more stores there, right?

BLACKWELL: Yeah, that's right. We want to show you some video from just a few hours ago. The rain's coming down now, but earlier -- a few hours ago -- overnight, actually, a SWAT team in riot gear, with the gas masks, the armored trucks, reminiscent of what we've seen earlier in the week, they were pointing those military-style weapons, and then marching slowly toward people who gathered in the rain outside the Ferguson market and the liquor store there. And we've got the numbers from our affiliate KMOV.

PAUL: Right, and reporting some 200 protesters are there, as you can see. And that eventually they were met by about 100 officers. Now, police reportedly say there was also at least one shooting, we understand, at a nearby intersection whip the victim rushed to the hospital, and an officer hurt by either a brick or rock that was thrown?

BLACKWELL: Yes. And this is coming one week to the day after 18- year-old Michael Brown was shot, the reason that all of this began. He was killed by a member of the Ferguson police department, and just yesterday the city's police chief named the officer who pulled the trigger. His name is Darren Wilson, 28 years old, and the protesters for days demanded that information.

PAUL: They did, yes. And, of course, that name came also with the details that tied Brown to an alleged robbery in the area as well, which has left a lot of people asking questions.

BLACKWELL: Yes. And it's really inflamed some tensions. And here the emotions already were raw. Let's show you exactly what we saw overnight and into the early morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: A tense standoff overnight in Ferguson, Missouri, as police in riot gear confront looters. What started out as a night of peaceful demonstrations escalated into violence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were at least three Molotov cocktails one of our crews saw. They were thrown on to the roof of a Domino's pizzeria. The police, the fire department, were called in and able to put out the flames quickly before much damage was done. But that resulted in a bit of a police show of force here that ultimately culminated with a very, very tense standoff.

BLACKWELL: The flashpoint, the Ferguson Market and Liquor Store, the same store that's become part of the case surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown, the teen who was killed by police. Officers on Friday released surveillance video that allegedly shows Michael Brown taking part in a robbery at that store.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay back! Stay back!

BLACKWELL: A SWAT team lined up across from the store commanding people via bull horn get out of the street and get on to the sidewalks or go home. Officers warned if they disobeyed, they would be arrested.

CROWD: Hands up! Don't shoot!

BLACKWELL: Minutes after the looting, about a dozen people lined up to block the entrance of the convenience store, putting their hands in the air. They said they've come to fend off the looters.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looked to me like you came over to try to protect the store.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's what we did. We see the store --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They going to --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything is still there. We protected the store. They was going to set it on fire.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: You've seen a lot in the video of young men wearing those red bandannas. I spoke with about five men who had those on. They say that that's to symbolize the blood that Mike Brown shed when he was killed a week ago. Also, we saw photographs of owners of Sam's Meat Market there on, it's at West Fourth and Ferguson, the intersection where most of this is happening, standing there with rifles, with handguns, protecting their property because the police, as you saw there, did not get between the looters and those stores.

I want to bring in in Ana Cabrera now. She's been in Ferguson all week following of course the investigation and watching the very intense situation here. Ana, the first night after Captain Ron Johnson took control of the police scene here and security in town, it was quiet, essentially -- no looting, no shooting. But last night, very different story.

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Unfortunately we saw that unrest return to the streets of Ferguson. We moved from where you are, Victor, to the heart of where that looting happened last night. You can see it's kind of just a normal day here in Ferguson on a Saturday, with the rain coming down, traffic returning to the street, and peace also returning to the street.

I want to call your attention to the store just over my shoulder, and, of course, as luck would have it on live TV there's a big truck with a trailer on the back that just pulled up blocking the people who are standing in front of this store, the Ferguson market and liquor store. That, of course, was the flash point, the site of the flash point of the developments we learned of yesterday regarding the robbery in which Michael Brown was the alleged main suspect in that case.

But I had a chance to run across the street and talk to the folks who are still standing in front of that store, and they tell me they are there to show support to the store owner, to show a presence in front of that store, and essentially make a symbolic statement that we're not going to set aside and let people destroy our community.

Now, I also had a chance to speak with the assistant manager of the Dollar Store, which is across the street where we're standing right here in front of that Dollar Store, another business that was looted last night. And I want you to hear what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: We had crews on the scene who described a very tense situation, and there was fear that perhaps if police had confronted these people who were looting that maybe there could have been a gun battle and people would have lost lives. What do you think?

SERETHA ALFORD, ASSISTANT MANAGER: With that situation, it's so scary now you don't know who to trust. You don't know who the good guys is, or who the bad guys is because of this situation. So out here people are fearful. People are scared. And they have the right to be scared.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: That is the bottom line here right now, unfortunately. It's still a sense of, of uncertainty about what's going to happen as we continue to follow this case and the investigation. Victor?

BLACKWELL: All right, Ana Cabrera. We are expecting, Christi, there to be a vigil here right across from the Ferguson Police Department to start at noon local, 1:00 eastern. So we'll see exactly how many people in this inclement weather show up for that in a couple of hours.

PAUL: All right, and Victor, stick with us here, because we want to bring another voice into this conversation, L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks. Remember, he spent 38 years as an L.A. police officer before becoming police chief. Captain Parks, thank you for taking the time to be with us today, we appreciate it.

BERNARD PARKS, LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCILMAN: Thanks for the invitation.

PAUL: Sure. Let's talk about Ferguson's police chief if we could. Op Twitter, on Facebook, I'm inundated on people wondering why it took six days to release the officer's name? Certainly we understand and appreciate the fact there may be death threats against him, but what do you make of that?

PARKS: I think, first of all, there is a legitimate concern about the safety of the officer and his family. But once that safety issue has been resolved, it's public information and should be released. And so why it took a week, only that department would know, but certainly it added to the tension in the community.

BLACKWELL: Councilman, I have a question for you. At the same time that Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Mike Brown, his name was released, the department tied Michael Brown to this strong-arm robbery. A lot of people in this community tell me that they see that as an insult, an effort to malign him, especially considering that the chief later said that the officer did not know about the robbery or that Mike Brown was potentially connected to it when he saw him in the street that day.

PARKS: Yes. I think what you have is, there's a -- there's a variety of peripheral issues that seem to be taking center stage. The center stage should be investigating thoroughly the shooting and whether the officer had a right to use deadly force. I think the secondary issue is you certainly want as part of the larger investigation to document the entire picture. If it's accurate that he was involved in a theft or a robbery, it should be documented. It should be part of the report. But do not lose sight of what the primary investigation is. Did the officer use deadly force appropriately? And that is where it should be zeroed in on, and these peripheral issues should be part of a larger report but certainly should not overtake the importance of that issue.

PAUL: I do want to ask one question, if I could, please, though, about that tape that was released, because Victor said something this morning that was really interesting and stuck with me. The store owner says he didn't call police, only that he was told he needed to turn over that videotape. And I immediately thought, how would the police have known about the robbery if it wasn't called in?

PARKS: There could be a number of things. It could be witnesses that observed it. It could be a variety of ways. Everyone has a cellphone. Everyone has access to communication. So it could be a variety of ways. Only the checking through the communication system could they make some assessment as who made that call. But, again, you know, the one thing that's unclear to me is through what channels did those videos become public? Was that a Freedom of Information Act by the media? Was that something done voluntarily by the police? These are things that have been unclear as related to the reporting on this story.

BLACKWELL: I just learned from our producer, Christi, that the governor, Governor Jay Nixon, will be back in Ferguson today after another night of unrest here, something very reminiscent of what we saw earlier in the week with the armored vehicles and military-style weapons trained on people here who were protesting, and also the looters.

Sir, I want to ask you about, your time there in California. You were there as well during the Rodney King riots. There was a lot of criticism early in the week of the local police that they were too aggressive. There was a lot of criticism last night of the state troopers, that they weren't aggressive enough. It seems like you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. How do you strike that balance? How can they now get it right? Or is it possible they'll never please people being critical of their response?

PARKS: Unfortunately, on circumstances such as these, often people make up their mind early on, and there's not much material that will change their mind. You hear constantly we want to have an objective investigation, we want a fair investigation, we want justice. But no one ever asks, what does that mean to the individual? There are those who will view each piece of information that comes out as being negative to their point of view.

I don't know if there is a formula that can dictate the identical or the exact amount of force or show of force. The issue is, you have a responsibility for the larger community that it not be trashed or burned or other people are being injured. So you must take effect there.

The use of military equipment, as people are calling it, the fact that you have it is for unique usages is important. How you display it is really a judgment call by that commander to see whether it inflames the crowd or whether it's going to serve a purpose.

One thing you find in police work, you do not benefit by just bluffing people. You must take a gradual approach and address these issues and take real sensitivity to the tenor of the crowd and what you can get done, but you're not going to just bluff them by showing up with military equipment. You might cause just a reverse of anxiety or disruption. So it is a very sensitive issue in how you deploy those resources.

PAUL: Councilman Bernard Parks, we are so grateful for your perspective. Thank you so much.

PARKS: Thank you. Thank you very much.

PAUL: Sure.

And, Victor, of course, being out there in Ferguson. You've been talking to people, and there just don't seem to be answers coming fast enough for those folks, do there?

BLACKWELL: Yes. There's still so many questions out here, and one of the biggest questions is, who is the officer? Who is the officer that shot Michael Brown? Of course, now we know his name, but we'll hear from neighbors are saying about Darren Wilson.

PAUL: OK, I also want to get you in some breaking overnight news as well about new U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, warplanes hitting ISIS fighters that are moving toward and important dam there. We're going to take you live to Iraq in a couple minutes. Stay close.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: The riot gear and the Molotov cocktails returned to the streets here in Ferguson, Missouri, overnight. Tensions flared up again just hours after police linked Michael Brown to, they say, a robbery at the same time they released the name of the officer who shot and killed him. I want to bring in now CNN's Ed Lavandera, because there have been so many questions about the officer who shot him, Darren Wilson. We now have his name, but what more have you learned about this officer?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's been a little of a slow process on that front. But yesterday when they released the information of the officer's name and the video of Michael Brown, you instantly at that press conference, which they had done at the gas station that had been burned down several days before, you got the sense and the anger was palpable. They had to push the police chief out of that area as people were completely overwhelmed and angry by the release of that information. And it's kind of overshadowed everything. You kind of got that sense that things last night were going to be a lot more tense.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA: The Ferguson police chief says this surveillance video shows Michael Brown engaged in a "strong-arm robbery" moments before he was shot and killed. Police say Brown stole a $49 box of Swisher Sweet cigars, and when the store clerk confronted him, police say Brown shoved the man into a display rack and walked out.

CHIEF THOMAS JACKSON, FERGUSON POLICE: A further description, more detail was given over the radio.

LAVANDERA: Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson released that information at the same time he announced 28-year-old Darren Wilson was the officer who killed the teenager leaving the impression that the robbery and shooting were related. The chief's announcement instantly angered Ferguson residents.

CROWD: Hands up! Don't shoot! Hands up! Don't shoot!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why we never hear about this strong-arm robbery until just now?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They got to get their lies together!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just cannot believe that this is the tactic that this police chief and his administration are using to try to make this young man be deserving to be gunned down in the street like a dog. This is crazy.

LAVANDERA: A few hours later, Chief Jackson said the confrontation between Michael Brown and Officer Wilson had nothing to do with the robbery.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because they were walking down the middle of the street blocking traffic, that was it.

LAVANDERA: Darren Wilson worked as a police officer six years, four years with the Ferguson police department. He's described as a gentle, quiet, and distinguished officer. But the department refuses to release his picture.

Darren Wilson lives here on this street in another St. Louis suburb, about 25 miles away from the town of Ferguson. Many neighbors are reluctant to talk about him, but they say since last weekend's shooting they've seen a great deal of police activity here in the neighborhood, and that several neighbors also say Darren Wilson left here several days ago.

Jake Shepard went to high school and played hockey with Darren Wilson. He described the officer as a quiet guy.

JAKE SHEPARD, DARREN WILSON'S FRIEND: I can say without speaking to Darren, without even having heard his statements that at that moment in time he was scared for his life. I am 100 percent positive of that, because I could never imagine him even in that situation taking someone's life let alone taking someone's life with malicious intent, you know? He's just the last person on earth would you think would do something like that.

LAVANDERA: Officer Wilson now has an attorney, and a law enforcement source tells CNN interviewed twice by detectives, once right after the shooting and then is second more in-depth interview later. But the release of the officer's name has done little to calm the anger over Michael Brown's death.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All we want is the truth. That's all any person wants. If it was your child, wouldn't you want the truth?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA: Victor, you hear that over and over again. People interested in getting into the mindset of that officer.

BLACKWELL: Hopefully we can learn more about Darren Wilson. Ed Lavandera, thank you very much.

Christi, back to you. I know we've got a lot of stories are developing now.

PAUL: Thank you. I want to talk about the U.S. warplanes that are taking aim at ISIS overnight. Airstrikes targeting the terrorists near Iraq's largest hydroelectric dam. We're going live with you to Iraq, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: U.S. and Kurdish forces are trying to retake Iraq's largest dam from ISIS militants right now. From the air, U.S. war planes have been bombing ISIS terror targets on the ground. Kurdish military forces are said to be advancing towards that dam from the north. CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh in Erbil right now in northern Iraq. So, Nick, I know you said earlier that the Peshmerga forces had reported, these seem to be some of the most intense air strikes yet and they've been going on for some hours now. Do you know if they are continuing at this hour?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I can't tell you right now, Christi, if they are in action over the skies of that dam, but certainly we believe they will continue and they have been very intense in the past hour since early Saturday morning.

But this is absolutely key, because this is part of the electricity infrastructure of the whole country, the largest hydroelectric dam Iraq has. ISIS took it weeks ago. They even today we understand have engineers keeping it running, still occupying it. But the U.S. air strikes confirmed by CNN are basically aimed at softening up the ground around the dam, a number of points, four, we understand, geographical locations, plus being hit also what are referred to as ISIS mobile unites being hit. Those would be the ISIS militants who have armor or vehicles taken off the Iraq army, using them to speed they're advances in various areas hit hard by U.S. air power.

Quite what comes next isn't being spelled out. Conflicting reports from the Peshmerga Kurdish militants, are they already advancing or are they simply waiting for the opportunity to do that? The real question, though, Christi, is that ground fight for the dam is going to be awfully messy. We just don't know if ISIS will leave it without a fight or if some awful damage will occur. Remember, that's hundreds of thousands of tons of water held back, and if it does suffer some sort of damage, the catastrophic consequences are hard to imagine.

PAUL: Hey, Nick, we heard from Anna Coren earlier today too about the human refugee camps, and it's excruciating to see what's going on there. They're dealing with brutal heat and horrible conditions. Have you learned anything more about the humanitarian situation there and what they still need?

WALSH: In Erbil, it's less of that crisis. As you say, it is in the north. But it's a major issue simply with the heat here. We have the luxury of water available to us all the time. But it's 120 Fahrenheit a lot of the time here, and that is what's causing, those harsh elements are what's causing the casualties. This is a whole region with thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, millions on the move that's causing damage to every neighboring country's economy. Christi?

PAUL: Nick Paton Walsh, we so appreciate you bringing us the latest from that region. Thank you, and do take good care.

New tension, meanwhile, overnight in Ferguson, Missouri, this time protesters and police alike confronted new looters. Victor Vlackwell is live in Ferguson. What do you see, Victor?

BLACKWELL: Well, Christi, the protesters were actually the ones who stood between those stores and those potentially would-be looters, and there were also some store owners who pulled out some weapons to protect their property as well. We'll have it all for you, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Bottom of the hour now. Welcome. I'm Christi Paul. Victor Blackwell is live for us in Ferguson, Missouri, where at noon protesters are planning to hold their hands in the air at a vigil across from the Ferguson police station. That's around the time that Michael Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson just a week ago now. Another rally we know is planned at 4:00 p.m. eastern.

But here's the thing. Overnight looters hit three businesses. Here's some of the video we got in overnight. And armored vehicles, law enforcement officers in riot gear, tactical rifles, all of it got back on the streets. And there have been a lot of questions about all of the munitions that police have at their ready, but I want to bring in Kristi Neace. She is the wife of a police officer. Kristi, first of all, thank you for taking time to talk to us. When you see what's happening in Ferguson, first of all, I want to know how you feel about that.

KRISTI NEACE, POLICE OFFICER'S WIFE: You know, it is a very sad situation. Anytime that anyone loses their life, especially so tragic and at such a young age, it's just very sad. And so all of our hearts are broken over this.

PAUL: You wrote an op-ed about this, and you started it by saying, "My husband is a cop." And you went on to really defend their honor, and what they do on daily basis. And you say, "Imagine for one moment how it feels to be spit on, flipped off, cursed out, beaten, shot at, run over, belittled, all for doing a job, a job." What do you say to the people who are so angry with police officers right now there in Ferguson?

NEACE: You know, the tensions are returning high, and just from the blog posts and all the comments I can tell, there is so much hurt and so much pain and so much hatred right now and it's understandable. But it's just, I was trying to get across on the blog that there is another side. There's the side of the officers that, we don't normally see in the media. We don't normally see the human side behind the badge. And so that was the intention of the post, to just bring a human side to the person that is out there on the street working the streets.

PAUL: We know that -- we don't know a lot about Darren Wilson, obviously, but we do know, we've had people come out and say this 28- year-old officer is a good man, that he's horrified by what happened, that he is really torn up about the fact that he killed another man. Have you ever had to -- you have or your husband or any of his colleagues ever had to deal with trying to reconcile the fact that they took a life? NEACE: Yes. Not my husband, but we do have friends that have gone

through similar incidents, and I can assure you that they struggle with this very deeply. There are constant nightmares over it. They relive it over and over in their minds. And it's very hard for them to come to grips with what has happened. And it haunts them for a very long time, which can affect them, not only their work but it can affect their home life as well.

PAUL: What do you think of the fact that -- because one of the biggest questions is, why did it take six days to name the officer? Why do you think it took six days, or what do you and your husband both think of that?

NEACE: Yes, you know, I haven't been down there. I don't know all the situation. I just as with others are learning new truths every day. It's still very much in its infancy. So as far as why they didn't release the name, I'm not sure, and I can't really answer that. But, you know, it's one of those things that I'm sure has been thought about a lot and really considered as to how and when. So all I can do is just leave it in the hands of the experts.

PAUL: Christi, you also wrote, "In truth the hatred we see is not with the person behind the badge but the authority he or she represents." A really profound and interesting article that you wrote, a blog you wrote. We appreciate your words and we appreciate police officers and what they do and their service. It's such a sad situation, because here you have a child, well, not a child, but an 18-year-old who is dead, as most people can see for no real apparent reason, and then you've got an officer and his family who now their lives have changed forever as well. So Kristi Neace, we appreciate your voice in this. Thank you.

NEACE: Thank you.

PAUL: OK, moving on here real quickly. A Republican presidential hopeful indicted -- a closer look at the charges against Texas Governor Rick Perry. Will they stick?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Texas Governor Rick Perry has been indicted on two felony charges. According to special prosecutor Perry is accused of abusing his veto power by trying to pressure a district attorney to resign. Earlier I spoke to an investigative reporter for "The American Statesman" Tony Plohetski. And I asked how these charges came about.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TONY PLOHETSKI, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, "AMERICAN STATESMAN": The district attorney of Travis County, Rosemary Lindbergh, was arrested on a DWI charge in April, 2013. Two months later as the state legislature was finishing their session and finishing the budget, Governor Rick Perry sent word to Rosemary Lindbergh basically saying resign from your office or I'm going to veto an item in the state budget that would have given $7.2 million to her office.

PAUL: So is there any way that he could have handled it differently if he had wanted her to deal with the DUI arrest?

PLOHETSKI: Well, perhaps he could have sent word to her that he wanted her to resign, and he did do that. The problem here according to prosecutors and others closely following this case is the fact that he linked those two things together. He linked a threat and then he linked a veto. So in essence, according to the prosecution, he used that money, that $7.2 million for her office, to try to coerce her into resigning.

PAUL: Now, we understand Perry's lawyer has basically called the indictment bogus. Does he have anything to back that up?

PLOHETSKI: No. I mean, his position is that Governor Rick Perry has constitutional authority, constitutional veto authority as the state's governor. And so according to Perry's lawyer, Governor Perry the lawyer, he was merely exercising that constitutional authority, that constitutional veto authority.

PAUL: OK, so these two felony charges, I mean, they carry with it some hefty repercussions, as I understand it. Yes?

PLOHETSKI: Potentially up to 99 years in prison for the most serious charge. Yes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL: Oh, you know people are just chomping at the bit to talk about this, particularly CNN political commentators Marc Lamont Hill in Philadelphia, Ben Ferguson in Dallas. Good morning, gentlemen. Glad to have you both here.

BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

PAUL: So Marc, I want to start with you. What do you say to the critics that say, you know, Rick Perry seems very much in campaign mode for the GOP presidential nomination and this is going to derail everything that he's done. What do you say?

HILL: Well, I don't think that this is what's going to derail Rick Perry's campaign. We can flash back just four years ago and we see some of the problems with Rick Perry's public presentation. We look at his stance on immigration. We look at the arguments he's making over the last few weeks. I don't think he was positioned well to be president, anyway. So I don't think this is going to destroy his presidential hopes. I think they were already not going anywhere.

But the bigger question is, did he engage in abuses of power? It appears to me that he has. If you threaten someone's -- if you threaten funding in exchange for a resignation, that is a pure abuse of power. I don't love to see governs indicted. No Texas governor has been indicted since 1917 on these types of charges. It was a very bizarre kind of political arrangement here and I don't like seeing it with Obama or Rick Perry or anybody else. It feels very political. But by the letter of the law it does seem like an abuse of power. PAUL: All right, well, Ben, I mean, his attorney is saying, listen,

he's got the constitutional veto, authority to do so, but did he abuse any powers?

FERGUSON: No, because he didn't hide it. You have a public official whose office actually is in charge of investigating public corruption. She gets belligerently drunk, drives drunk, gets pulled over. On video at the police station she is screaming, ranting and raving at the police, belligerent. And he's like, I'm not going to give you millions of dollars to investigate public officials when you obviously are out of control as a public official. So you need to resign. Then the money is still going to come into your office. And if you don't resign, the public does not trust you with these millions of dollars because we've seen what you're going on tape, how you're screaming at police officers, how you're driving drunk, and they've lost all their support for you.

The other thing was this wasn't hidden. This was talked about all throughout Texas. Should she get this money? This was not some backroom deal. Talk shows were talking about it after she was arrested. And so to say you're going to indict the governor because he vetoed something he openly talked about, is pretty obvious he wasn't trying to hide it. He wasn't trying to, you know, do something behind the scenes or threaten someone. This was all in the public eye. Everyone knew this was going on. Let me say this, the only reason they got the indictment was because they went to the most liberal part of the state and they got a Democratic area and made it political. And you had a D.A. that wants to run for a bigger office making a name for himself.

PAUL: Marc, go ahead.

HILL: The most liberal part of Texas? That's about a two-block radius. No.

FERGUSON: That's where they got the indictment.

HILL: No, no. I agree. Rick Perry was bullying here. Rick Perry was abusing his power. I don't think there's any doubt about that. The question, the fact he did it publicly isn't exculpatory. Just because you bully and abuse power publicly doesn't make it less criminal.

PAUL: Marc, do you think that he's going to serve time?

HILL: No. I don't think he's going to serve time. Look, politicians, governors do this all the time. I'm not excusing Rick Perry's behavior. I think it's abuse of power. I think it's bullying. I think he should be disciplined for this. I hope people watch him and realize that this is exactly why he should not be president or even a contender for the presidency. But I don't want to get into the habit of whenever someone uses political power we start to indict them, because if we do that there's going to be a whole -- we would need special prosecutors just for governors, Democrat and Republican. FERGUSON: You know what's funny. You have a woman here in charge of

investigating people that are corrupt in public office. She obviously cannot handle that responsibility by the way she attacked the police and drove drunk. And he said, I don't think the citizens of Texas trust you with $7.5 million. The people of Texas agreed with Governor Perry on that one, and they supported him. So I think this is all --

PAUL: Wait, wait. Gentlemen, let me get one last thing in, because I know there's something else you want to talk about. President Obama, we only have about a minute left. Ben, first to you. Should he go back to the White House in light of everything that's going on, not just in Ferguson, Missouri, but on Iraq. I mean, he's been -- really criticized --

FERGUSON: Yes.

PAUL: -- about being on vacation right now.

FERGUSON: And he should because the world is looking to him for leadership now. Even France, they said this week, you can't get all the countries together, the world together, on this persecution, this genocide of Christians while you're on vacation. It makes it look like it's not very important to you. So I do believe he should go back and get the world around him.

PAUL: Marc?

HILL: Ben, I know you're from Texas so you may not know this, but there are computers in Martha's Vineyard. There are security forces in Martha's Vineyard. There are aides at Martha's Vineyard. He can run the world from Martha's Vineyard. I have lots of critiques of Obama, especially this week after Ferguson and what's going on Iraq and what's going on in the last few weeks. But him being on vacation is not the issue here. He can handle business from there.

PAUL: All right, Ben Ferguson and Marc Lamont Hill, we always appreciate the two of you being here, and such lively conversation. Thank you both, gentlemen.

FERGUSON: Thanks.

HILL: Pleasure.

PAUL: Sure.

You know, another big -- boy, big topic in the news, this man. So many people shocked to hear that Robin Williams committed suicide. We have new information now from the comedian's wife that maybe could reveal more about his state of mind at the time of his death.

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PAUL: The death of Robin Williams has gotten a lot of people talking about depression, hasn't it, and now Parkinson's disease. This beloved actor and comedian was open with his battles with depression, but the public had no idea Williams was one of the millions of American coping with Parkinson's. CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes a look at the links here.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Christi, I will tell you that there is a clear relationship between Parkinson's and depression. It's not so much that one causes the other. It's more that if you have Parkinson's and you've already had depression, it could make depression worse. Part of it is psychological. A guy like Robin Williams, for example, liked to exercise, liked to ride his bike. He did that in part to alleviate his symptoms of depression, and with the diagnosis of Parkinson's he might worry he wouldn't be able to do that longer term.

But some of it is more than that. It's really what's happening in the brain. For example, people with Parkinson's disease, then tend to have less of something known as serotonin, which is a feel-good hormone in the brain. If you don't have as much of that, it could make the depression worse as well.

If somebody had early stage Parkinson's, and keep in mind, most think about the tremor when they think about Parkinson's, but there are many other facets to it. People may have difficulty with balance. They may have difficulty with even blood pressure. They also can develop something known as a masked facies, having difficulty actually making expression with their face. And obviously that is something that would have been very important to him as well.

He talked about his cocaine use in the '70s and '80s. We don't know that that had an impact and gave him more likelihood to have Parkinson's disease, but there are lots of studies on this specifically. We would have to wait and see another 10 to 15 years to see if there is, in fact, a relationship between early cocaine use and later onset Parkinson's. That link just hasn't been established, even though a lot of people talk about it.

The good news for people with Parkinson's is that there are good treatments available. In fact, one of my favorite movies, "Awakenings," ironically, in some ways, Robin Williams played a doctor who found uses for the medication L-Dopa. That's a medication that can be used to treat Parkinson's disease. There's also things like deep brain stimulation, which has been used, and also early trials on stem cell transplants. So there are some potentially good options there. Christi, back to you.

PAUL: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.

And remember, you can watch "Sanjay Gupta M.D." later today at 4:30 eastern this and tomorrow morning at 7:30 eastern. We'll be right back.

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PAUL: This week's CNN hero brings comfort to soldiers with a little help from man's best friend. Reuniting soldiers from around the world with the stray animals they adopted while serving.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm deployed to Afghanistan three times. We head out and spend hours on guard. We come back and the dogs will be so excited to see U.S. you forget you're half way across the world in a desert with hostile things going on.

PEN FARTHING, CNN HERO: On every street corner in Kabul you find stray dogs. Looking after dogs and cats relieves stress in your daily lives, and so it holds true for U.S. soldiers as well. When I was serving in Afghanistan I actually thought it was quite unique looking after this dog, but I was wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Once we came close to leaving I knew I didn't want to leave them behind.

FARTHING: To date now, the organization has actually rescued over 650 dogs or cats serving soldiers from around the world.

Hello!

We help the stray animals out in the streets. There is a big problem with rabies. We're not just helping the animals, we're also helping the Afghan people.

When we get a call from the soldier, we have to get the dog from wherever the soldier is to our shelter. We'll neuter, spay the dog, and vaccinate against a variety of diseases. Then the animal starts his journey from Kabul to the soldier's home country.

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I pulled Kate from inside of the crate I was so excited. I was even more excited that she remembered me. I couldn't believe they're here. She's been such a help. She's a huge part of the transition being easier for me.

FARTHING: Had I never met him in the first place, none of this would have happened. My connection with Afghanistan stayed alive because of this. So for me every time I look at him, it makes me smile.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL: Great story.

It's been a pleasure to be with you this morning. Thank you for taking the time with us.

BLACKWELL: Certainly. But we will have much more for you from Ferguson here live in the next hour of CNN Newsroom. It starts right now.