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Aaron Hernandez Trial Continues; Obama Talks Internet, Cyber Security; ISIS Getting Closer to U.S. Military Base in Iraq; Video Key Evidence in American Sniper Murder Trial

Aired February 13, 2015 - 14:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: There was a small handgun, found in the wooded area, near an industrial park near the murder scene. Prosecutors are not saying that it was the gun, just that it looks like the gun they cannot find. If it's not the weapon, why was it brought up at all?

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: Listen. First of all, I'm less concerned about that if I'm on a defense team because you're in a secluded area in an industrial park. There are lots of guns presumably that could be there. There are lots of tire tracks that could be there, Brooke. There are lots of shoeprints. Show me the DNA and the connection that this gun actually is to my client, otherwise, don't show it to me at all. So apparently, the judge felt it had some value and it was otherwise relevant, but that could be explained away. Far less damaging than the cell phone that we just talked about.

BALDWIN: All right. Thank you both very much, on the Aaron Hernandez trial.

Also, just in, President Obama releasing a statement moments before taking the stage about the triple murders in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Remember, we watch and waited for him to speak at the cyber security summit in northern California, but he did speak about these murders in North Carolina saying, in part, "Yesterday, the FBI opened an inquiry to the brutal and outrageous murders of Deah Shahdy Barakat, Yusor Abu Salha and Razan Abu Salha. The FBI is taking steps to determine whether federal law was violated. No one in the United States should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship. Michelle and I offer our condolences to the victims' loved ones." Words from the president of the United States.

Much more on breaking news today. ISIS militants surrounding a base, an Air Force base in Iraq that houses some American troops. Moments ago, the Pentagon referencing some of the terrorists may be wearing Iraqi uniforms. We'll speak with one former soldier who built the base more than a decade ago. He got emotional. Stand by for that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right. Let's take you to Palo Alto, California, Stanford University. The president just got to the podium, speaking in the wake of some high-profile hacking scandals. He's talking cyber security at the summit. Let's listen.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Many other members of the cabinet are here. The secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, is here and our Small Business Administrator Maria Contreras- Sweet. And I want to acknowledge my tireless Homeland Security adviser who helped and continues to shape our cyber security efforts, Lisa Monaco.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: Thank you, Lisa.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: So, you know, I'd always heard about this campus and everybody's riding bikes and people hopping into fountains --

(LAUGHTER)

-- and the current holder of the ax.

(CHEERING)

OBAMA: This is the place that made nerd cool.

(LAUGHTER)

I was thinking about wearing some black rimmed glasses with tape in the middle. I guess that's not what you do anymore.

(LAUGHTER)

I was told if I came to Stanford, you talk nerdy to me.

(LAUGHTER)

But I'm not just here to enjoy myself.

As we gather here today, America's seen incredible progress that we can all be proud of. We just had the best year of job growth since the 1990s. Over the past 59 months --

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: Over the past 59 months, our businesses have created nearly 12 million new jobs, which is the longest streak of private-sector job growth on record. And a hopeful sign for middle-class families, wages are beginning to rise again. Meanwhile, we're doing more to prepare our young people for a competitive world. Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high. Here at Stanford and across the country, we've got the best universities, best scientists, best researchers in the world. We've got to the most dynamic economy in the world. And no place represents that better than this region.

So make no mistake, more than any other nation on earth, the United States is positioned to lead in the 21st century. And so much of our economic competitiveness is tied to what brings me here today, and that is America's leadership in the digital economy. It's our ability, almost unique across the planet, our ability to innovate and to learn and to discover and to create and build and do business online and stretch the boundaries of what's possible. That's what drives us.

And so when we had to decide where to have this summit, the decision was easy because so much of our information age began right here, at Stanford. It was here where two students, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, met. And in their garage, they started a company that eventually built one of the first personal computers, weighing in at nearly 40 pounds. It was here in 1968 where a researcher, Douglas Engelbart, astonished an audience with two computers connected online and the hypertext you could click on was something called a mouse. A year later, a computer here received the first message from another computer 350 miles away, the beginnings of what would eventually become the Internet.

By the way, it's no secret that many of these innovations, built on government-funded research, is one of the reasons that if we want to maintain our economic leadership in the world, America has to keep investing in basic research and science and technology. It's absolutely critical.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: So here at Stanford, pioneers developed the protocols and architecture of the Internet, DSL, the first web page in America, innovations for cloud computing, student projects here became Yahoo! and Google. Those were pretty good student projects.

(LAUGHTER)

Your graduates have gone on to help create and build thousands of companies that have shaped our digital society, from Cisco to Sun Microsystems, YouTube to Instagram, Stubhub. According to one study, if all the companies, traced back to Stanford graduates, formed their own nation, you would be one of the largest economies in the world, and have a pretty good football team as well.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And today, with your cutting-edge research programs and your cyber initiatives, you're helping to navigate some of the most complicated indicated things in the nation. That's why we're here.

I want to thank everyone for being here, members of Congress, representatives from the private sector, government, academia, privacy and consumer groups, and especially the students who are here.

Just as we're all connected like never before, we have to work together like never before, both to seize opportunities, but also meet the challenges of this information. And it's one of the great paradoxes of our time that the very technologies that empower us to do great good can also be used to undermine us and inflict great harm. The same information technologies that help make our militaries in the world are targeted by hackers in China and Russia, who go after contractor systems that are built for our troops, the same social media we use for government to advocate for democracy and human rights around the world, it can also be used by terrorists to spread hateful ideology. So these cyber threats are a challenge to our national security.

Much of our critical infrastructure, our financial systems, our power grid, health system, run on networks connected to the Internet, which is hugely empowering, but also dangerous, and creates new points of vulnerability that we didn't have before. Foreign governments and criminals are probing these systems every single day. We only have to think of real-life examples, an air traffic control system going down and disrupting flights, or blackouts that plunge cities into darkness, to imagine what a set of systematic cyber attacks might do. So this is also a matter of public safety.

As a nation we do more business online than ever before, trillions of dollars a year, and high-tech industries like those across the valley supports millions of American jobs. All this gives us an enormous competitive advantage in the global economy. And for that very reason, American companies are being targeted, their trade secrets stolen, intellectual property ripped off. The North Korean cyber attack on Sony Pictures destroyed data, exposed thousands of pictures and disclosed personal information of Sony employees, and this is hurting American companies and costing American jobs. So this is also a threat to America's economic security.

As consumers, we do more online than ever before. We manage our bank accounts. We shop. We pay our bills. We handle our medical records. And as a country, one of our greatest resources are the young people who are here today, digitally fearless and unencumbered by conventions and uninterested in old debates, and they're remaking world every day. But it also means that this problem of how we secure this digital world is only going to increase.

I want --

BALDWIN: So the president -- I thought it was interesting, I was just jotting it down -- referencing young people, especially in his audience, speaking at Stanford University, not just speaking to members of Congress or those in the private sector, private enterprise in the Silicon Valley, saying the young people today are digitally fearless, but in the wake of, you know, several major companies being hacked, the big challenge is cyber security. This is what the president is addressing here at Stanford, you know, really touting government funding, critical investments in science and technology, but also saying, listen, it's a tough world out there with the challenges to cyber security, so hoping to build this bridge, right, between the government, in between these businesses when it comes to protecting and preventing hacking.

A quick little note before I move along. It's a big audience. Apple's CEO Tim Cook is there. But there are three big names who are not, the top executives at Google, Yahoo! and Facebook not there, because of -- a little context, background of these three -- because the strange trade relations over security and privacy concerns between Silicon Valley and the White House.

ISIS militants, coming up. Surrounding the base in Iraq that houses American troops. Moments ago, we were watching the Pentagon daily briefing referencing some of the terrorists, that may be wearing Iraqi uniforms. We'll talk with one former soldier who helped build the base more than a decade ago.

Plus, it's become a key piece of evidence in the American sniper trial. This dramatic dash cam video shows the police chasing down the killer of Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield. We'll take you live to Texas.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Back to breaking news. ISIS militants are now in control of this Iraqi town just a couple miles, nine miles from this military base housing hundreds of U.S. military personnel and security officials tell CNN ISIS seized this town, al Baghdadi, earlier today and now they are getting closer and closer to this al Assad Air Base, nine miles west.

And Army Specialist Joey Hurst was stationed in Iraq and helped build this base back in 2003, years before he launched his career here at CNN.

This is the base that ISIS hat now encroached upon. They've taken the town of al Baghdadi. You got out beyond your Air Force base gates. What was it like?

JOEY HURST, CNN ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: It was -- it was actually really, really nice. I mean the Iraqi people were really nice to us. This was as the invasion was happening. You could see the strong hold Saddam had on their country. Once we stepped foot over there and the Iraqi people realize that he was no longer in power, they would give us hugs and tell us thank you and tell us we love you, and it was tremendous support around the area.

#; Now flash forward more than a decade later, we were talking before about your losing a friend, and knowing what you know now about everything you fought for and built, and now ISIS coming in, how does it make you feel?

HURST: I feel disenfranchised. I was talking with one of my old Army buddies I was in with. Like I said, I had a good friend that was killed when I was over there. You know, Brooke, I'll never forget that day. He died. And, you know, seeing that Humvee come back to us that had been hit with a roadside bomb and knowing that's where Sergeant Williams, you know, breathed his last breath here on earth. And we were towing it back at the palisades base. It feels safe and secure, but fast forward to 10 years later, it's going right back to where it was.

BALDWIN: Saddens you, frustrates you, angers you, all of the above? HURST: All of the above. You know, I know that the Marines there,

you know, are definitely willing to fight, and if it does cost them the chance -- you know, if they do have to end up paying the ultimate sacrifice, you know, it's really going to be hard on me, knowing that I had already done that 10 years ago and saw a good friend die because of it. You know, one of my oldest memories from al Assad was when we were cleaning out the Humvee that had just been attacked and hit with a roadside bomb. As we were getting all of the gear off of it and putting it in our storage units, there on the base, we were taking some of Sergeant Williams' gear he could no longer use because he lost his life.

BALDWIN: I am so sorry. Thank you so much for your service and thank you for talking.

HURST: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Joey, thank you.

HURST: All right. Thank you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just a heads-up. Basketball's biggest stars are shining brightly for the NBA all-star weekend. The big game kicks off in the Big Apple Sunday. It's a battle for bragging rights between the east and west conferences. The face-off includes Lebron James, Carmelo Anthony, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.

Coming up next, prosecutors say the man accused of killing the American sniper talked about voodoo, hell, and the apocalypse. All of this as we see video of the chase just after Chris Kyle's murder. Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: I have to share this video with you. It is stunning video in the trial for the man accused of killing American sniper, Chris Kyle. What you'll see is officers ramming Kyle's stolen truck as Eddie Ray Routh fled. There he is, speeding through this cloud of smoke in pursuit of this former Marine. Ultimately, they arrested him. Before that chase, a bizarre string of events after Routh allegedly killed Kyle and his friend, Chad Littlefield, at the shooting range. Routh allegedly stole Kyle's truck after the murders, stopping at a Taco Bell. And during a standoff with police, officers say he made strange statements, including -- let me quote here -- saying this, "I've taken a couple of souls and I have some more souls to take." He goes on, "Satan is walking on the earth with us right now. Is the apocalypse upon us right now."

Ed Lavandera, he's following all these twists and turns in Texas, joins us.

What is all that about and what happened today?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Today, prosecutors are taking jurors inside the home of Eddie Ray Routh, showing them pictures of what they discovered in the hours after he was arrested and had finally turned himself over to police. They found a trove of drug paraphernalia inside the house. Glass pipes that they say that are consistent with the use of methamphetamines as well as other pipes. Some of the drug paraphernalia hidden away in an old-fashioned Hershey's chocolate tin can.

His uncle has even testified today, saying that in the hours before he went to the gun range with Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield, that they had smoked marijuana and drank whiskey together, all of this, Brooke, very important, because prosecutors are saying that it was the abuse of recreational drugs, not prescription drug mental drugs that -- and alcohol abuse that led to his actions on the day that Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield were killed -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Ed Lavandera, thank you.