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McStay Murders; Attorney General Pick; U.S. Military Frustrated; Freed ISIS Prisoner; SEAL Proclamation about bin Laden

Aired November 07, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And, here we go on this Friday afternoon. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Great to be with you.

A major break today in this murder case that until today has been as baffling as it has been unsettling. There has now been an arrest in the murders of the McStay family, Joseph, Summer and their little two boys here, Gianni and Joey, whose remains were found last November almost four years after they mysteriously disappeared. So this entire family, including these young sons, had been buried in a shallow grave in the California desert. The suspect now is identified, here he is, as Charles Ray, or Chase, Merritt, Joseph McStay's former business partner. The San Bernardino, California, sheriff's department just posted this video online showing Merritt being brought to jail. Merritt is charged with four counts of murder.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE RAMOS, SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: We followed the special circumstance of multiple murders, which makes him eligible for the death penalty. I don't need to tell you that this is a cold and callous murder of an entire family. There is no reason, no motive. We won't talk about that for that ever, ever to occur, especially for the young children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Randi Kaye is the person to talk to here.

You have covered this for years now. You did an entire documentary. You were the only journalist to have interviewed this business partner, now suspect. What was he like?

RANDI KAYE, CNN REPORTING: We spent about an hour talking to him this past January.

BALDWIN: Wow.

KAYE: So January of this year, which was several months after the remains had been found in the Mojave Desert. He was calm. He was cool. He was very relaxed. He was talking to our crew, to our photographers. He was emotionless, but yet warm at the same time. And we certainly never suspected anything.

We talked for about an hour, as I said, and he had so many things to say about Joseph McStay. He considered him a very good friend. He had very nice things to say about him. We also talked about his meeting with police and the fact that he took a lie detector test. So listen to this.

BALDWIN: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: And you took a polygraph test. What did it show?

CHARLES "CHASE" MERRITT, ARRESTED IN MURDERS OF PARENTS, TWO YOUNG SONS: I don't know.

KAYE: You passed the polygraph?

MERRITT: Apparently. I mean I haven't -- after I took the polygraph test, law enforcement has not contacted me at all since. So I kind of simply assumed -- well, apparently that resolved any issues that they may be looking at with me.

KAYE: Do you think - do you think you were a person of interest?

MERRITT: Well, I was the last person who saw him. So, of course, I was a person of interest. They needed to talk to me. they needed to find out anything that I knew, of course, but -

KAYE: Did detectives ask you if you killed Joseph McStay and his family?

MERRITT: I don't recall them asking me that.

KAYE: Nothing that direct?

MERRITT: Huh?

KAYE: Not directly?

MERRITT: I don't - no, I don't recall them being that direct. And you've got to realize that mostly at the time it was the detectives believed that Joseph and Summer and the kids left on their own volition.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: So there you have it. Part of our one-hour exclusive interview with Chase Merritt.

BALDWIN: Hold on. I'm not - I have more questions. I have more for you.

KAYE: (INAUDIBLE) that's right. There's so much (INAUDIBLE).

BALDWIN: So he's charged with these four murders. So, if, in fact, you know, this goes through, he's convicted, obviously he lied straight to your face. Did he offer up anyone as who he thought might have done this? KAYE: We asked him who he thought - what in his gut -- who he thought

in his gut might have done this. And he believed -- he told us that he thought it was somebody random. He didn't think it was family or friends. But the remains were found, you know, in the middle of this desert in these two shallow graves. Some thought, even some of the authorities thought, that it had to have been someone who knows that area. He lives about 20 miles from that area. And it might have also been, they have said, somebody who knew the family very well, even though he thought it was random, someone who knew the family very well because why -- who could kill two beautiful young children, three and four years old, unless they thought maybe the children could identify them.

But one thing he also did was point at Summer, Joseph McStay's wife, the woman who was killed also. He said that Joseph hadn't been feeling very well. He had spells of dizziness and nausea and he actually said that - he told me that Joseph McStay talked to him and said that he thought maybe Summer, his own wife, was poisoning him. So pointing a lot of different fingers.

BALDWIN: We'll be watching. I know you're going to be all over this tonight on "AC 360."

KAYE: Yes.

BALDWIN: And coming up a little later, as you alluded to, Tuesday night, you can get a closer look at the McStay case and hear exclusive from the suspect, Charles "Chase" Merritt. Watch "Buried Secrets: Who Murdered the McStay Family," Tuesday night, 9:00 Eastern on CNN.

Randi Kaye, thank you so much.

And now to this one. You heard it first here on CNN. President Obama has now whittled down his list of candidates for attorney general to one person. According to U.S. officials who have been briefed, the president is expected to nominate Loretta Lynch to replace current Attorney General Eric Holder. Lynch is the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn. This woman is a career prosecutor. No controversy in her background. She is well liked. Reputation, solid.

She helped win one of the nation's highest profile police brutality cases. This is back in 1997. The sexual assault of a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, inside a Brooklyn police station. An announcement from the president is expected in the coming days, possibly weeks. We're not entirely sure as of yet. But if she is nominated and confirmed, Lynch would make history becoming the first African-American female attorney general of the United States.

So, Sunny Hostin, former federal prosecutor, CNN legal analyst, you, pretty bigwig in your own right, actually interviewed with her.

SUNNY HOSTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I sure did.

BALDWIN: How did that -- what do you remember about her?

HOSTIN: You know, it was really interesting. I was already an assistant United States attorney, a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C.

BALDWIN: OK.

HOSTIN: Looking to come back to New York, my hometown. I'm a native New Yorker. And I was told there are two offices -- federal offices in New York. You either go to the southern district of New York, which is sort of this high profile office, right? It's in Manhattan, handles a lot of the high profile terrorism cases, as well as financial cases.

BALDWIN: Terrorism cases.

HOSTIN: But the eastern district of New York, which is where Loretta Lynch is the U.S. attorney, is known as really the real office. That's the prosecutor's office. She's known as being sort of a prosecutor's prosecutor. And it's the workhorse office. It's the office that handles all the drug smuggling that comes through from the airports. It's the office that handles -- has a very diverse case load. And so when I interviewed with her for the job, I should have been a shoe-in, right, because I was already an assistant United States attorney, well -

BALDWIN: You expected to fly through?

HOSTIN: I really did. And she interviewed me with no special favors. She asked tough questions, clear questions. She was very precise. Very no nonsense. Not a lot of giggles. Not a lot of smiles. And I really respected that. She treated me the way she would treat anyone else. Not like an insider, but someone that was seeking the privilege of being an assistant in her office.

BALDWIN: How about that.

HOSTIN: And so it really made an impression upon me.

BALDWIN: So a prosecutor's prosecutor.

HOSTIN: Yes.

BALDWIN: No special favors to Sunny Hostin. And also, as we know, coming up with the Senate now turning red, with the Republican majority, you know, it could help her in her favor if and when she is confirmed and facing those tough questions, minus the political baggage that could make that a tough fight.

That said, we mentioned the police brutality case, which really became a national symbol back in the late '90s. Given the fact that what happened in Ferguson is definitely in the blood stream, even current attorney general went there, how do you think that will play?

HOSTIN: Yes. Well, you know, I think if she is confirmed and that case sort of falls under her jurisdiction, I think she's very well placed to handle something like that because she has the Louima case under her belt, because she is a career prosecutor. She's not a politician. She is the person that I think would be able to handle the spotlight in a case like that and look at it for what it would be, which is a civil rights case. BALDWIN: Because she's been there, done that. Yes.

HOSTIN: And so this is -- if he truly -- if the president nominates her, it is, I think, a masterful choice. She's very gracious. Very well regarded. Harvard undergrad. Harvard Law School.

BALDWIN: Right. A Greensboro, North Carolina, native.

HOSTIN: A native of North Carolina. Very, I think, a southern lady in a sense. You can still hear that in her voice. You can sort of hear that lilt (ph) when you do chat with her. And I think it's going to be a very interesting thing to watch if she is at the helm when this Ferguson case, if it does sort of, you know, blows up.

BALDWIN: Right. First - would be first female African-American, just for those of you who like trivia, final thought for me, from "The New York Times," "if she is nominated and confirmed, she will be the first since 1817, U.S. attorney directly promoted to the position of A.G." Two centuries.

HOSTIN: Isn't that fascinating.

BALDWIN: Two centuries.

HOSTIN: It's fascinating.

BALDWIN: Sunny Hostin, thank you very much.

Just ahead here on CNN, this chilling exclusive. We sit down with a prisoner of ISIS who survived months and months of mental, physical torture. Hear what these terrorists did to him with televisions.

Plus, the Pentagon says we were never supposed to know the name of that Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden, but now he is coming forward. You will hear about those moments in that compound in Pakistan and what he did in the hours afterward.

And the FBI searching the home and office of an American diplomat and expert on Pakistan. We will tell you why, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

As the U.S. wages war on brutal ISIS militants, there is word that some U.S. military officials are frustrated. They're frustrated with the White House over this whole air strike campaign. They are suggesting ISIS targets may be slipping away. In fact, just in the last 48 hours, the U.S.-led coalition unleashed air strikes, eight of them, in Syria and another six air strikes in Iraq. Let me go to our global affairs analyst, Kimberly Dozier.

And, Kimberly, I know you've been talking to both former and current military sources and you say they are frustrated because why?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Frustrated because as many targets as are being hit, they say others are slipping away while they try to verify, to the best of their ability, with limited intelligence on the ground, that these really are people that the U.S. is allowed to hit under the current rules it's operating under. They also say that there is a need by the White House to be sure, absolutely sure, there are no civilians in some of these convoys that they're seeing by satellite at night. They might be able to see the driver, but they can't see who's behind in the covered wagon part of it. And, you know, in the process, while they're trying to listen to everything that's in the convoy to get that intelligence the White House wants and needs, the people slip away in the darkness and there goes the fighters back to the fight.

BALDWIN: So a minute ago you mentioned the rules. And this is a key point I think to explain to the viewers because the rules differ depending on whether or not it's the U.S. going it alone or the U.S., you know, involved with other countries. And in this case, obviously, it's multiple countries.

DOZIER: Well, that's the other thing. The other coalition nations involved in some of these air strikes are often relying on U.S. intelligence to take the shot. And so the potential blowback for them, say it was a European air strike and the target on the ground ended up including women and children, that could cause them to have to pull out of the coalition. And it was pretty hard for the White House to pull together this coalition in the first place, so they don't want one single target to break everything apart.

BALDWIN: President Obama, we also know, he wants Congress to approve the new authorization of the military force against ISIS. How would that then change the rules of engagement?

DOZIER: Now, what that could do -- right now we're using kind of a patchwork. The U.S. is using the armed use of military force for Iraq, which gives them the right to hit al Qaeda targets and other terrorist targets inside Iraq that threaten Iraqi citizens or the U.S. And then the other AUMF was the one signed after the attacks of 9/11 against al Qaeda. What a new AUMF could do is take gloves off for the U.S. military inside Syria. Right now there are some operations going on but they're kept small and they're mostly run by the CIA so that the White House can deny that they're happening. A lot of members in the military that I'm speaking to would like to see the gloves off and see those operations expanded. So they're watching this AUMF discussion with Congress closely.

BALDWIN: AUMF, authorization of military force. Kimberly Dozier, thank you very much.

DOZIER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Now to a CNN exclusive. This chilling account of what life is like for prisoners of ISIS. One man survived torture, both physical and emotional, for eight months. He reveals the terrorist group's tactics to senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You can survive ISIS' prisons but may emerge different. Jwan Khalil is a Kurd from Kobani, held for eight months as a commodity. Hoarded and exchanged by the dozens in a prisoner swap a few days ago. Inside, the beatings quickly stopped, but ISIS went to work on their minds.

"They beat me when they first took me. That's all. They hung me from the ceiling for an hour. My legs were not touching the ground. They beat us for three days with water pipes. We were bleeding."

He says they love (ph) long beards, so he grew his out.

"They gave us lessons on the Koran and Sharia in the prison. Someone came and gave us lessons at noon. I was in prison for eight months and only once went outside."

And then they played them propaganda videos all day and night. This one of Syrian regime soldiers being herded and massacred in August.

"Two months earlier in prison, they brought us a TV for our room. They left it on 24 hours a day so we could watch how they kill people. We said to ourselves, now it's our turn. We watched how they beheaded foreigners."

Jihad Sheikh Mohammed was a fellow captive and didn't see the sun for three months. When he was allowed to leave, when the Kurds had enough ISIS prisoners to swap, he says ISIS gave him this piece of paper. A 24-hour pass out of their territory.

Both former prisoners said ISIS let them know they would not be harmed and then pardoned them and let them go.

"What you hear and what you actually see aren't the same. They're not monstrous like people say. They'd not kill anyone immediately. If a person deserved to be killed, they kill him. But if they have nothing on you, you won't be killed."

A rare voice perhaps distorted by its time in chains. For ISIS, even those traded as commodities, need converting to their world too.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Gazanta (ph).

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Nick Paton Walsh, thank you very much.

Coming up, he says he fired that fatal shot that killed Osama bin Laden. Wait until you hear the details of the raid, what he was doing during President Obama's historic announcement while bin Laden's body was in the next -- room next to him. This is fascinating, fascinating stuff. Plus, one of his colleagues says this Navy SEAL is now a target himself. Stay right here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: According to Navy SEAL code, the history books were never meant to know Rob O'Neill's name, but it is all over today's papers and postings that O'Neill is the shooter who killed Osama bin Laden. O'Neill is now a motivational speaker. You see him here in a video from the group Leading Authorities. He revealed himself to "The Washington Post." So if you read this article, let me quote part of it. "In an account later confirmed by two other SEALs, the Montana native," this is O'Neill, "described firing the round that hit bin Laden squarely in the forehead, killing him instantly." But the author of this book, "Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden," CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen says two sources deny that's how it happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Most of the people in the SEAL community I've spoken to say that the night that bin Laden was killed, somebody called the point man, who is never going to identify himself publicly, was the guy who took the first shot at bin Laden and wounded him and then bin Laden collapsed on the ground in his bedroom and he was finished off by two other SEALs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Bergen's sources say one of the two SEALs who fired the final shots was Rob O'Neill. And while praised by the public, O'Neill has been condemned by some current and former SEALs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN GILLIAM, FORMER NAVY SEAL: He sacrificed a lot in doing this. Whether he is the real shooter or not, he's put a bull's eye on his back that is bigger in a lot of ways than the bull's eye that Osama bin Laden had on his.

ANDERSON COOPER, ANCHOR, CNN'S "AC 360": You're talking about an actual bull's eye from jihadists.

GILLIAM: From jihadists, you know. So his family, himself, he's on the speaking lecture circuit, anybody that goes to see this guy now is a target when they're in a room with him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Joining me now from "The Washington Post," the reporter who wrote all about Rob O'Neill, Joby Warrick.

And, Joby, it's a phenomenal piece and I thank you so much for taking a couple of minutes just to walk me through it. But the first question, which is the obvious question is, you know, it's been more than three years now since that infamous, historic raid in Pakistan. Why is Rob O'Neill now coming forward for you?

JOBY WARRICK, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, you get a sense, just listening to these other speakers, how complicated a decision this is for him because he is -- he's a family man. He's someone who's concerned about his safety. It's more than two years now since the first book about the - about the raid came out from that (INAUDIBLE). And he was looking at a situation where he was going to be (INAUDIBLE) sooner or later and it looked like sooner because people were starting to talk about who he was and his identity, the fact that he was involved in the raid. Members of Congress, members of the media were coming up to him. So it was his attempt to try to hang onto some credibility and some piece of this bit of history for himself and try to get the story right. And you can - you can sympathize for the person wrestling with a decision like that.

BALDWIN: Before we get to some of the details, let me just follow-up on one more point related to all of this. How does he respond to some other members of the SEAL community saying, that's not how it happened, and also to the bull's eye on his back from jihadists?

WARRICK: Yes, on the fact -on the discrepancies in his story, there actually aren't that many, because if you think about it, he was the - he -- everybody acknowledges there was a point man who takes a shot. It appears that that first shot did not hit bin Laden because when the other SEALs go into the room, bin Laden is standing there with a woman in front of him. And that's pretty consistent in all the stories. And so that's when the fatal shot takes place and the one who is set up to do that, the one who had the gun literally aimed at bin Laden's head was Robert O'Neill and he took that shot as he describes it. And so, you know, there's a lot of chaos that night. It was dark. It was crazy. But everything that we've seen and we've talked to other SEALs as well, it's consistent with the fact that he would have fired that fatal shot.

BALDWIN: How many shots did he tell you he took?

WARRICK: So he told us about three. So there was the head shot, which is the one that very, obviously, killed bin Laden. It was fairly graphic and gory. There were at least two other shots that he made. But he said, you know, almost instantaneously, other seals burst into the room and several of them took additional shots at bin Laden as he was down to make sure he was dead.

BALDWIN: Before the actual raid you write about - you know, he tells you about the practicing, the running the drills in this mock compound. And, I mean, this is someone who has, you know, been around the world, was involved in the Captain Phillips, you know, raid in Somalia. This is someone who has been there, done that, you know, to the inth (ph) degree. Yet, as he was approaching this compound in Pakistan, he truly thought he was going to die.

WARRICK: It was really a very poignant moment because he did, he was convinced he was going to be killed in this raid. And as you said, he's done so many things. He's been in so many dangerous situations that in describing some of them to me, it was just - just unbelievable. But this is the one mission that he just assumed he was not going to survive because just everybody figured that bin Laden's preparing for this moment, he's got his people there, he's got all kinds of bombs set to go off and he just really didn't think he was going to survive that day and instead he ends up making history.

BALDWIN: There was another piece in your story so -- and you alluded to this. You know, word had sort of begun to spread among military communities, members of Congress, that he was the shooter. And you tell the story and you quote this New York congresswoman, he was gathered to speak with some 9/11 victims' families and sort of spontaneously he began to tell them the story of what happened in Pakistan.

WARRICK: You know, it's really an incredible moment. He was invited to give part of his uniform to this museum and as part of that gift, he was able to meet some of the families. And so he's in a small room with a bunch of them and it gets very emotional. These are people that lost, you know, loved ones, fathers, husbands, wives. And in telling that crowd a little bit about what he did, he just, at that moment, decided to tell them exactly what happened that night in the compound and he described it as just being a very tearful moment and many members of this audience came up afterward and just thanked him for what he did and just said this brought some closure to them.

BALDWIN: Final question, can you just paint the picture, as you do in the end of the piece, as the world is watching President Obama speaking from the White House saying that Osama bin Laden has been killed, and yet here is this man eating a sandwich.

WARRICK: It's certainly surreal. And he paints it that way as well. So after this incredibly stressful, incredibly dangerous raid where they kill the world's most wanted terrorists and then they're having to beat back to Afghanistan as quick as they could because the Pakistanis are scrambling jets and it's all very chaotic. They land back at their base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and then the sun is starting to rise. They're exhausted. They're hungry. Somebody brings them food. So they're having breakfast sandwiches. You've got this moment where he's there having a bite of his breakfast and the next room, in full sight, is the body bag with Osama bin Laden and here's the president of the United States on the television just announcing the results of this raid. And it was just overwhelming and all he could really do was just, you know, kind of tune it out and ate his food and just went on with his life.

BALDWIN: No words. Phenomenal heroism from that entire team. Joby Warrick with "The Washington Post," thank you so much for coming on and sharing this story and this interview.

WARRICK: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Incredible stuff. Thank you.

Coming up next, as president meets with Republicans at the White House, did Democrats lose because they didn't focus on the economy? One Republican says, yep.

Plus, an American diplomat who is an expert on Pakistan just had her security clearance revoked. Why? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)