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Jesse Matthew Arrested in Texas; Nine New Terror Arrests in London; Iran President to Address U.N.; Ferguson Police Chief Issues Apology

Aired September 25, 2014 - 09:00   ET

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: A lot of news this morning, right to Carol Costello.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Have a great day.

NEWSROOM starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, a new wave of strikes in Syria.

REAR ADM. JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: They were struck with precision-guided munitions over the course of about an hour and a half this afternoon by both U.S. and coalition aircraft.

COSTELLO: As a key ally enters the conflict.

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Britain will play its part.

COSTELLO: America this morning laser focused on ISIS hideouts.

KIRBY: There will be more. There will be more.

COSTELLO: And arrested.

CHIEF TIMOTHY LONGO, CHARLOTTESVILLE POLICE: Jesse Matthew is in custody in Galveston, Texas.

COSTELLO: Breaking new details on the case of the missing UVA student Hannah Graham.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Deputies responded to a call of the suspicion person camping on the beach.

COSTELLO: Why was he in Galveston? What evidence did police find? This morning Jesse Matthews faces a judge.

Also --

ANNA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Why did you decide to take this case to the grand jury?

BOB MCCULLOUGH, FERGUSON PROSECUTOR: Well, a couple of reasons. One is that forever we have taken all homicide cases to the grand jury.

COSTELLO: A CNN exclusive.

MCCULLOUGH: You don't just walk away from a case because you know you're catching a lot of grief over it. I can be fair and I have been fair.

COSTELLO: One on one with Ferguson prosecutor Bob McCullough.

Can a lawyer whose father was killed in the line of duty by a black man be unbiased?

And latte-gate.

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW": The bottle of Jack Daniels and a cigarette in the other.

COSTELLO: The president, a cup of coffee and a picture worth a thousand words.

Let's talk, live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We begin with new developments in the disappearance of UVA student Hannah Graham.

Just moments ago suspect Jesse Matthew appeared in court in Galveston, Texas. Authorities want to bring him back to Charlottesville, Virginia. He was captured yesterday four days after he sped away from police in the Virginia college town. Police got a tip that a suspicious person was camping out on a beach in Galveston.

This surveillance video caught Matthew at a convenience store in the area on Tuesday, 1300 miles from where Hannah went missing.

We're covering this story from all angles but let's start with Jean Casarez, she's in Charlottesville.

Good morning.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. It was just minutes ago that Jesse Matthew appeared in his initial appearance before a judge in Galveston County. And we actually were able to hear him talk a little bit, the first words out of his mouth, Carol, was, "They took all my clothes and I had to sleep on a hard thing."

Well, the judge deviated from that for a moment and went into the charges. He's being held, it's a federal hold that is on him right now. The warrant out of Virginia of course fugitive from justice, it is abduction of Hannah Graham and also the local Texas charges that allowed him to arrest him, failure to identify himself as a fugitive and intent to give false information.

The question now and the judge asked him, are you going to sign that you want an attorney to fight extradition or you don't want an attorney, so I think that's the pivotal issue at this point, is he going to try to not come back to the state of Virginia?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CASAREZ (voice-over): Police say they now have the man wanted in connection with the kidnapping of 18-year-old Hannah Graham.

LONGO: Because of the collaborative efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and state and local law enforcement across this nation, Jesse Matthew is in custody in Galveston, Texas.

CASAREZ: This is the latest video of Jesse Matthew working as a volunteer football coach hours before he met the University of Virginia sophomore. Later that night he was seen on this surveillance video putting his arm around Graham at the Charlottesville downtown mall. Police believe he was the last person to see Hannah before she vanished September 13th.

LONGO: We have a person in custody, but there's a long road ahead of us and that long road includes finding Hannah Graham.

CASAREZ: A Galveston County judge told a local reporter Matthew didn't resist arrest and that deputies responded to a call of a suspicious person camping on the beach at around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. A run of the license plate showed a warrant for Matthew's arrest.

ADAM S. LEE, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, FBI: The hero of today is an employee, a deputy with the Galveston County Sheriff's Office.

COSTELLO: Earlier this week Matthew was recorded walking into the convenience store on the Bolivar Peninsula near where police picked him up. He purchased a few items and left.

Matthew worked as an operating room patient technician at the university's medical center, but has since been suspended without pay. Items collected from searches of Matthew's car and apartment are being examined by technicians at the Virginia Department of Forensic Science.

JEFFREY NAN, VIRGINIA DEPT. OF FORENSIC SCIENCE: We're determining whether an item of evidence, a body fluid or whatever came from a particular individual.

CASAREZ: The police chief expects those DNA results back before the end of the week. Meanwhile, a devastated community waits for answers.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CASAREZ: And it took about four hours between the time that Jesse was arrested and then brought in to the jail.

And Carol, I spoke with the jail and they said they were doing a lot of questions of Jerry Matthew because this is an emergency situation. Where is Hannah? She's been gone for 12 days now and under that emergency doctrine they're allowed to ask him, where is she, what do you know, how can we find her.

COSTELLO: All right, Jean Casarez, stand by. I want to go to CNN's Ed Lavandera now. He's live near Galveston, he joins us on the phone.

Ed, did you -- did you see Jesse Matthew in court and if you did, what was his demeanor?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we are -- Carol, we're on our way into Galveston now and trying to track down exactly what brought him here, you know, what -- you know, what authorities might be looking for here on the island and any kind of clues that might help in this investigation.

COSTELLO: So at this point, we don't know if Matthew knew anyone in Galveston, Texas?

LAVANDERA: No, it's not exactly clear. You know, so that is obviously something that will be of great interest to investigators, what brought him here, perhaps is there anybody helping him, and that sort of thing. So, you know, we'll be trying to dig into that today.

COSTELLO: All right, we'll let you get back to it, Ed Lavandera reporting live for us as well.

Police say this case is nowhere near over. Initially they issued arrest warrants for Jesse Matthew for reckless driving but now he's facing charges in Hannah Graham's disappearance.

CNN senior legal analyst Paul Callan joins me now and I hope Jean Casarez is still with us.

The charge against Jesse Matthew is interesting. He's been charged with abduction with intent to defile. I've never heard of that charge, Paul.

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's a very strange statute in Virginia, and it's obviously a type of kidnapping where there was an intent to sexually abuse or rape the victim. What I find to be most interesting about it is that the murder statute in Virginia has a provision that if you abduct with the intent to defile and the victim is killed intentionally that's a death penalty case.

So they're obviously setting this up for a death penalty charge should the evidence indicate that Hannah has been killed in the course of whatever happened to her.

COSTELLO: Interesting. So Jean, we know police searched this guy's car and they took forensic evidence out of that car. Any indication of what they found?

CASAREZ: No. That is not being released and I am in correspondence with the state crime lab, they are continuing to do the forensic testing on these items and they had the first round, now they're doing the second round, and the police chief has said on the record that he believes that later in the week, he'll get the forensic results so I don't think that they have those yet.

However, the police chief did say that there was credible evidence found in the car and his apartment that led to that abduction charge. And maybe those are tangible items, you know, cell phone, wallet, things that they can touch and hold.

COSTELLO: And Paul, I guess the next step -- well, the next step for Virginia authorities is just get the guy back to Virginia, so do you think he'll fight extradition and if he chooses to fight extradition, will he be successful?

CALLAN: Well, it's always an interesting question because people think wow, he'll battle extradition but in truth, to extradite somebody all you have to prove is that he's the right person, he's Jesse Graham and that Virginia has issued a warrant for his arrest. There's no examination of the strength of the case or his guilt or innocence so it's very, very hard to fight extradition.

Now Virginia law enforcement authorities might like to see him fight extradition because it will give them more time to develop their case in Virginia while he remains in custody, if he comes back to Virginia, they've got to present it to the grand jury or appear before a judge and they're going to have to start showing their hand, did they really have enough evidence to indict him. So this is a weird case where I think it would be a good thing for Virginia if he fights extradition.

COSTELLO: It is a weird case.

CALLAN: Yes.

COSTELLO: Paul Callan, Jean Casarez, many thanks to both of you.

Still to come, London Police launch a terror sweep and you may recognize one of the nine suspects. What the radical cleric said on CNN just a few weeks ago that got the Internet buzzing and American tempers rising.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The U.S.-led airstrikes on ISIS continues. The coalition grows larger and the critics grow louder as well. Right now -- actually this is not the Iranian president, but soon the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is going to speak before the United Nations telling the General Assembly that he, too, believes ISIS must be eradicated but he says the strikes in Syria are illegal because Syria did not give permission.

Yet the coalition grows. Belgium and the Netherlands say they will take part in the airstrikes but only in Iraq. ABC News says French military leaders are discussing that option today. British lawmakers will hold that debate tomorrow. The British Prime Minister David Cameron at the United Nations says countries need to step up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CAMERON: ISIL is a threat to us all, but the greatest threat is to the region. It is very welcomed that a number of Arab countries have already taken part in the action to degrade ISIL. They have shown courage and leadership.

Iran should also be given the chance to show it can be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: In the meantime, the latest strikes in Syria targeted oil facilities operated by ISIS. They enrich the group by about $2 million every single day. A human rights group in Syria says day three of the strikes killed 14 militants and five civilians.

Also new overnight London Police arrest nine men on terror charges that are accused of belonging to or supporting a banned organization. According to British media reports, one of the suspects is the radical Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary.

He might look familiar to you, just a few weeks ago he was on CNN's "RELIABLE SOURCES" refusing to condemn the ISIS beheading of American journalist James Foley.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN STELTER, CNN HOST, "RELIABLE SOURCES": How can you not look into the camera, though, and unequivocally condemn the beheading of a journalist who was there trying to tell the story of the people affected by bombings and killings in Syria?

ANJEM CHOUDARY, RADICAL CLERIC: Well, quite frankly I think it's completely pathetic for to you ask a Muslim to condemn the killing of one individual, when hundreds of thousands of Muslims are being slaughtered of which you don't know the name. People have been raped and they've been humiliated. We have our sister, Aafia Siddiqui, in America who was beaten and tortured --

STELTER: But I'm talking about a specific case that has been widely publicized about a journalist who was trying to tell the story of Muslims in the Middle East.

CHOUDARY: Well you know, as I say, I think that this is the result of the barbarity of the American foreign policy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Well, he's in custody now. Let's take a closer look and in just a couple of minutes, Brian Stelter will talk about his interview with this man.

But let's begin with the arrest and CNN's Erin McLaughlin, she's in London.

Tell us more, Erin.

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol.

Police are saying that those arrests are not in response to any sort of imminent public safety risk. They arrested nine individuals by the counterterrorism unit overnight. Those nine individuals mainly arrested in London, but also in the English town of Stoke-on-Trent, they were aged between 21 years old and 51 years of age.

Police at the moment are not releasing their identities, but as you mentioned, British media are reporting that one of them is a well- known radical cleric by the name of Anjem Choudary.

Now, we know that there has been this growing concern in counterterrorism circles about some of the pro-ISIS rhetoric coming from Choudary and some of his supporters.

Important also to note that the police, while they are not naming the individuals that have been arrested, they are also not naming this organization, this banned organization in question -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Erin, thank you so much.

Now, let's turn to Brian Stelter and your interview with this guy. It was astounding what he said. It was disgusting what he told you.

STELTER: And I think he was purposely provoking in the interview with me and in other interviews on other American media, he had been on FOX News that same week. He started with me during the sound check before it aired by -- you know, usually we say to say to one count to ten on your microphone so that we can make sure it's working. He started saying, one, two, three, four five and said 9/11, 7/7, 3/11.

COSTELLO: Wow.

STELTER: He starts naming the dates of Islamic attacks in different countries and he started laughing about it. When I asked him in the interview, he told me I shouldn't take it so seriously. I think it was a jolting reminder to me that people like this sometimes try to provoke. He does that not just on television here, but on YouTube, on his Twitter account, et cetera.

COSTELLO: I was just going to ask you that, because some people might criticize you for putting him on television, but he's out there on the Internet and what he says radicalizes some people.

STELTER: Yes, it was a tough one for me. I wasn't sure what the right call was. And so, a week after we had him on, we had someone come on the program and criticize what he said, respond to what he said, refute what he said so we did have a variety of opinions heard.

But I almost always come down the side of saying we hear all of these voices, even the extreme ones like him, and I think question look back to 2001 for an example of that, a very different situation of course, but Osama bin Laden identified a number of reasons why he said he was motivated to organize the attacks on September 11th.

We may be horrified to hear those reasons, but it's important to hear how they justify the crazy things these people do.

COSTELLO: Are you surprised he's under arrest now in Britain?

STELTER: He had been targeted before so this is striking that after a few weeks after Prime Minister Cameron came out and talked about the upgraded terror threat in that country that he and a number of other men have been swept up in this. I wonder what happens if and when he gets released and he takes back to Twitter and takes back to YouTube and uses it perhaps to gain more converts.

COSTELLO: Well, there are a lot of people out there that hopes YouTube and Twitter do something about that.

Brian Stelter, thank you so much. >

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is just about to speak before the United Nations General Assembly. We expect him to talk about the war on ISIS and Iran's role in this crisis. We do not expect Rouhani to say anything remotely positive about the United States, at least not publicly.

Rouhani did sit down with CNN's Fareed Zakaria and criticized the Obama administration for arming moderate Syrian rebels. Rouhani says it will not be effective, in fact he says America could be creating another terrorist group.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR, FAREED ZAKARIA: When you say that you don't want the United States to fight is but in the fighting of it to create another terrorist group, what group are you thinking of?

PRES. HASSAN ROUHANI, IRAN (through translator): The American authorities themselves they have announced that they wish to train another terrorist group, equip that group and send them to Syria to fight.

ZAKARIA: You mean the free Syrian army?

ROUHANI: You can call it whatever you wish, sir. Be that as it may, it is a group, it is another group that, as they have announced, I'm not sure what their plan is, they say we wish to train these folks in another country, military training, and they even announced the time frame. With whose permission, with whose authority? With what mandate according to what international laws and norms are they doing this?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Rouhani's trip to the United Nations also included the first face-to-face meeting between Iran and Britain in 35 years. Will Rouhani meet in some capacity with President Obama?

Trita Parsi is president of the National Iranian-American Council. He joins us now with more with some insight actually.

Good morning. Thank you so much for being with us.

TRITA PARSI, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL IRANIAN AMERICAN COUNCIL: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

COSTELLO: Thanks for being here.

So, Trita, will Iran help with ISIS, despite Rouhani's words?

PARSI: Well, if you listen carefully to what Rouhani was saying, he was actually far less negative than would be the standard of the Islamic Republic, and reality is that the Iranians have been fighting alongside the Iraqi government and the Kurds against ISIS for more than two months now.

What is difficult for them is to operate openly in coordination with the United States and operate under an American banner. That is not going to happen any time soon. Reality on the ground the U.S. and Iran are indirectly coordinating with each other when it comes to dealing with ISIS, at least in Iraq.

COSTELLO: Rouhani paints himself as a reasonable man. He likes to use Persian sayings like, in the middle of conflict, do not setting raids, and let's first raise the baby we just gave birth two, and we go on to number two. You know, he tries to be warmer and fuzzier.

Is he a reasonable man? Or is he Ahmadinejad light?

PARSI: I certainly don't think that he's Ahmadinejad light. This is a very different person.

But I think there's also limitations to how far the United States and Iran can go when it comes to dealing with the regional issues, as long as the nuclear issue is first resolved, and that is something that there's an agreement upon between both the United States and Iran that absent a resolution to that, the inhibitions, the obstacles towards greater collaboration is going to be very, very significant.

COSTELLO: Fareed Zakaria also asked Rouhani about the young Iranians who made the harmless video dancing to Pharrell Williams' song, "Happy." Let's take a look.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

COSTELLO: So, a result of making this video, these young people were sentenced to lashes. Rouhani told CNN his job is to uphold the constitution, but he also added he never saw the video.

Is he being disingenuous?

PARSI: It's actually very interesting because when this whole thing happened, there was a large impression that this was done by elements in Iran who wanted to embarrass Rouhani and Rouhani himself tweeted something that very much sounded as in support of these individuals who are dancing rather than in support of the judiciary.

Once on American soil, however, he's going to speak very different language. He's not going to be criticizing his domestic political opponent while sitting in the United States. He can be very harsh against him inside of Iran. But it was very clear he was uncomfortable that moment. He didn't want to say anything critical of them while on American soil.

COSTELLO: Well, it makes you wonder what might happen to these young people because I think that although they've been sentenced to lashes, the punishment has not yet occurred.

PARSI: Well, the punishment has been suspended, but the larger point though is, that there are still major human rights violations taking place in Iran and there hasn't been a movement on the issue as a lot of people hoped for.

Part of it is because Rouhani doesn't have the political maneuverability to do so until he first resolves the nuclear issue. That's why a lot of focus right now is on that issue and for the next two months to see if it can be resolved and once it is, hopefully it is resolved, then I think it's going to be very difficult for him to continue to accept the status quo inside of Iran's internal politics without major, positive developments on the issues of human rights.

COSTELLO: Trita Parsi, thanks so much for your insight this morning, it was really helpful. Thank you so much.

PARSI: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in THE NEWSROOM, the prosecutor in the Ferguson case feeling the heat from protesters yet again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Did you think ever about making a grand gesture by stepping down from this case and letting a special prosecutor take over?

BOB MCCULLOCH, ST. LOUIS COUNTY PROSECUTOR: There's a very vocal group, don't get me wrong, that thinks that I'm the devil incarnate and shouldn't be on this case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: More from our exclusive interview with Robert McCulloch, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

COSTELLO: All right, some breaking news out of Ferguson, Missouri, as you know that city had been engulfed in turmoil following the shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson. Now, after two months of unrest, the police chief is issuing an apology.

Ana Cabrera live in Ferguson.

And, before we get to that apology, Ana, you sat down and talked to the prosecutor in Ferguson. What did he tell you?

CABRERA: Carol, we are working to bring that apology to the public. It was in a video form and we are working to put it into a format which we can show on our air.

I want to talk a little bit more about prosecutor Bob McCullough. Lot of protesters are angry with him. We have been hearing these ongoing chants for him to recuse himself from the case because there could be a perceived bias with his involvement in the case. We spoke about that as well as what the grand jury is doing and how they're moving along in the investigation of officer Darren Wilson and the shooting death of Michael Brown.

COSTELLO: I'm sorry, what else did the prosecutor tell you?

CABRERA: I thought we were going to have a piece there to share with our viewers.

COSTELLO: I did, too. That's why we're a little off kilter here. We have your piece now, Ana, so let's roll.

CABRERA: We do have it.