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Two Students Expelled From University of Oklahoma After Video Of Racist Chang; The Politics and Repercussions Of "The Letter"

Aired March 10, 2015 - 15:30   ET

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


HILLARY ROSEN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The fact that she sent over the vast majority of her emails to people who actually had state.gov addresses, so the State Department has them. And those that they didn't have, they now have. And the rest is personal.

This is my question, really, which is, this woman is extremely smart. What do people think she was emailing that's so secret? Like, oh, my God, you know, tell Chris Stevens to do something. Well, tell that country to give us $10 million and I'll stop talking about women and girls.

I mean, what do people think she was doing? That's just not who she is. She was surrounded by staff all the time. When she got to a country, you know, her staff would go to the embassy and to the secret room to where they would establish the classified email system and give their trip reports.

I mean, there were a lot of protocols that she followed as secretary of state, surrounded by a lot of very solid, very reputable and honorable career officers who just don't stand for that kind of thing. I mean, this is just -- now we're going to move into conspiracy theories, beyond where we go with her email system.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Margaret Hoover, you're shaking your head.

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, I appreciate where Hilary is coming from. You know, I get that she's really loyal. I don't think this is about not giving Hillary Clinton a fair shake, truly. I mean, I'm not one of these people who is going to go down the '90s path of playing the whole Clinton playbook again.

But it just strains credulity. Like no government employee has the opportunity or ability to have their own personal server in their house. The government.gov accounts are owned and held by the government. That it's not about a conspiracy theory. It's about an open society and transparency and transparency in our leadership so there's accountability to the public. That is not -- before her did the same thing.

Well, Hillary, as you know -- actually, that's not true. We know for a fact that's not true. Condoleezza Rice didn't use personal email and Colin Powell used his state account as soon as the system was modernized when he came in in 2001. So all this technology has come into play. ROSEN: No, Colin Powell did use it and Condoleezza Rice set up a

personal email account. Of course she did. Whether she used it for official business, we'll never know, because we'll never see those emails. So, I think the point it, yes, give her the benefit of the doubt if you're going to, or you can go into a conspiracy theory about what might be on her personal server. And I just don't think the American people really are going to worry about it too much.

HOOVER: I just don't think it's fair to set it up that this is either conspiracy theory that you're a Clinton hater or just trust her. I mean, the truth is like we have accountability in our leadership because of transparency. And it's a totally fair and open thing to say, hold on a sec, how come we're just supposed to trust you? There's nobody else we just trust because we say we're going to trust them. That is just its accountability and transparency that we depend on in open societies. And that's not -- it just strains credulity to say you're a conspiracy theorist if you think it's weird she handed over 55,000 emails and that she controls those emails. There's nothing there. Like, move on.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Fifty five thousand pages she handed over she had it printed, printed pages. But she said today, new information, there were 60,000 emails that she had on that personal server, 30,000 she said were State Department, government related emails. She said she's handed all of those over to the State Department, 30,000 personal emails, which she hasn't handed over. And it's unclear whether they still exist or whether they were deleted or can be retrieved at some point.

Brianna Keilar was at this event, at this news conference at the United Nations. Give us a little flavor, Brianna, because we heard you have excellent question to the former secretary of state. What was it like over there?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, you so infrequently get a chance to ask Hillary Clinton a question. I'll tell you, we go around covering her at events all over the country. We've been doing this for more than a year. And it's so rare that you were even close enough to ask Hillary Clinton a question. So this was something we don't often get to do.

But there were so many reporters there, as you can see. And there were still a number of questions that remained unanswered. But really, the takeaway from this was Secretary Clinton saying she's not going to undergo any additional scrutiny. I asked her specifically, you know, if she was open to having her server looked at by an independent third party. This is something we've heard some of her supporters suggest. She's made it clear she's not going to do that.

And also something that I'm not sure if it was caught, Wolf, because it was very noisy, but she was asked about deleting her personal emails. And I yelled at her toward the end, when did you delete them? She said, at the end of the process.

So what I take that to mean is that once in 2014 when she and her staff had separated her personal emails from her government-related emails and turned over her government-related emails, that's when they deleted the personal emails. So this was really within the last few months. And certainly it came after red flags were raised by the Obama administration that this was the way that she and her team had been conducting her personal email.

BLITZER: She spent about 20 minutes, 22 minutes or so making a statement and answering reporters' questions. Did she seem to be getting -- and you were there, right in front of her, Brianna, more frustrated as the questioning continued?

KEILAR: No, I don't know if I would say that she seemed to be frustrated. I sort of expected that either she would come out with some statement where she said perhaps she would have an independent third party look at her emails or that she was going to take a lot of questions. She had to really do one or the other to show that she's transparent and she kind of took, I think, the easier way out for her. Rather than saying that she's going to turn over the server.

I will tell you, I'm not surprised that she wouldn't allow an independent third party to do this, Wolf. You have to keep in mind sort of its important when you think of Hillary Clinton to consider the context. This was someone who back in the '90s when she was in the White House, it was the Clintons who acquiesced and said, OK, we'll let an independent counsel in to look at the white water issues. They were under so much scrutiny. And the calculation they made There was mission creep with that independent counsel. That is ultimately what led to a series of investigations that led to Bill Clinton being impeached.

So this is not a woman who certainly is in this case, I think, going to lean towards that extreme transparency. So I guess it wasn't surprising to me she didn't go for an independent third party.

BLITZER: All right. Stand by for a moment, Brianna. Peter Hamby is here with us, watching what's going on, our national political reporter. I assume people are reacting quickly. We're getting statements from Republicans, from other Democrats r the supporters, the non-supporters, the critics. We'll be getting more of that. But it sounds to me like she's ready to move on. She thinks she's ready to move on. She's answered all the questions. Now it's time for her to get ready and make an announcement if she is running for president.

PETER HAMBY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, the mark of a successful press conference in a situation like this is, Hillary knows this better than I do. Bu did you answer all the questions and can you move past it?

And look. I think we're looking for a couple of things here. One was from a political process perspective, her sort of performance. You know, we were talking before earlier about her sort of contempt for the media that the Clintons have. I didn't see that at all, frankly. I was actually just texting with some former Obama people who aren't super fans of Hillary Clinton. And they're like, she's doing fine. She isn't showing any contempt or mistrust there, really.

But there are some questions she didn't answer. I want to go back to the question, were you ever specifically briefed on the security implications of using your own email server and using your personal address to email with the president? Then she said, I -- she didn't answer that question, but she said, I didn't email any classified material to anyone on my email account. You know, classified versus sensitive is a question too.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: She said it was a server that was set up for President Clinton's office, in fact. So one would presume there was a certain amount of encryption.

HAMBY: Sure. But that gets to the question of what is sensitive versus classified. I mean, travel is sensitive. I mean, Hillary is right. She's a smart person. She knows you are not going to put certain things in email. But, you know, my assumption is, you know, hackers are everywhere and crawling all over servers.

BLITZER: Let me bring Mark Rasch into this, former prosecutor at the justice department, expert on cyber warfare. When she says she never had any classified information in any of those 30,000 emails that she said she handed over back to the State Department, but there is a lesser classification, as you know, as a government employee, called sensitive information. It's not classified, but it is sensitive.

MARK RASCH, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT FORMER PROSECUTOR: It's called sensitive but unclassified. And also, there's something called the matrix theory, where if you take enough sensitive information, you can create classified information.

So the kind of stuff about personalities involved between ambassadors or things like that, which wouldn't necessarily be classified, could actually be used to harm national security. We don't know if there was this kind of information on there.

She said in her press conference that there were no security breaches, but one of the questions is, how would we know that? What kind of monitoring was being done and by whom? And how much security was put on it? So these are all questions that I think will keep this thing alive.

BLITZER: It's not going away. Everybody stand by because this is a story that presumably will continue.

There's other stories we're following as well. Straight ahead, that letter from Republican senators, 47 of them, to the Iranian leadership that Hillary Clinton mentioned right at the top of her statement. It's causing a lot of controversy. Said a nuclear deal with Iran could be revoked once President Obama is out of office. Could that letter backfire? We'll have full analysis of that coming up.

Plus, the fallout from the video showing fraternity brothers at the University of Oklahoma singing a racist chant, two students now have been expelled, and the identity of one student in that video is revealed. That and much more coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANA CABRERA: Hello. I'm Ana Cabrera. Thanks for joining me.

Just a short time ago, swift action from the president at the University of Oklahoma. We have just learned two students have been expelled now over their role in that video showing a group of sigma alpha epsilon fraternity members singing this racist chant.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYING)

CABRERA: University president, David Borne, said those students who played a leadership role in this video created a hostile learning environment for others, and there's a zero tolerance policy for these matters.

Now, the campus in an uproar, days of protests. The SAE fraternity house shut down. Members forced to move out. And the Greek letters literally ripped off the building there.

Let me bring in CNN national reporter Nick Valencia in Norman, Oklahoma.

Nick, I know you've just received new information about one of those young men seen in the video. What have you learned?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Ana. We can now positively identify one of those students in the video as 19-year-old Parker Rice of Dallas, Texas. According to OU, the campus newspaper here, Parker Rice, the 19-year-old, was one of the two students that was expelled earlier today by the president of this university. We also heard from a friend, who more on that just in a moment, but he also positively IDed Parker Rice in the video.

Also a statement from Jesuit high school, the high school that we know that Parker Rice went to school at, presumably alluding to him when they said one of their alum was seen in that clip.

Now, we have as an organization attempted to reach out multiple times to Parker Rice over the course of the last 24 hours via email, via phone, as well as in person. So far, he has not gotten back to us.

Now, to that friend, Matthew Lopez, who was a neighbor in the dormitory where Parker Rice was living. Freshman here on campus are not allowed to leave in fraternity homes. Matthew Lopez told me what he thought about the video that he saw this weekend. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEW LOPEZ, FRESHMAN: That video does not represent his core personality. Unfortunately, though, as things are, that might define him for a while. But it does not define him personally, I feel.

Parker Rice is a charismatic, good person with a good soul and a good spirit that I feel truly did not believe in or did not truly understand what he was saying. And I feel like that is due to the facilitation of not just him but the influence of the fraternity system and that traditions that had been embedded since pre-civil wartimes when the fraternity was made, which obviously weren't the most tolerant times. (END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: Now Lopez, who was also a freshman here at this university, said that he's known Parker Rice for at least four to five months and says that the person characterized in that tape, in that unspeakably bigoted video that we saw it not the friend that he knows - Ana.

CABRERA: All right, Nick Valencia. Thanks for staying on top of things.

Now, reaction to this incident has been widespread. We're now hearing from an African-American SAE member from this very chapter who attended the University of Oklahoma from 2001 to 2005. And he spoke with CNN just a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BRUCE JEFFRIES, SAE BROTHER: The guys in that video are not my brothers. My first reaction was complete disgust and shock. I was deeply offended as a black man in general, but I was devastated also, having been in that house for four years, put my own blood, sweat, and tears in cultivate agriculture that would never do that. So I don't understand what has happened in the time since my being there. They have the same pin with the same similar symbols and the same motto that I hold dear to my heart. And I don't know what they've done with it, but when I looked in the mirror as an SAE, thinking of what I saw in that video, I couldn't look at myself still claiming to be that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Let me bring BerThaddaeus Bailey. He is a student and the director of diversity for the University of Oklahoma student government there. He also holds the title of Mr. Black OU and serves as a student representative for African-Americans there at the university.

Thanks for joining me. There was this whole bus of chanting students when we see it in the video. Now the alleged ring leaders are expelled. Are you satisfied?

BERTHADDAEUS BAILEY, DIRECTOR OF DIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA STUDENT GOVERNMENT: I am satisfied with that decision. My first reaction to that, I was really in denial. I didn't want to believe this was my school and these were students in my school that were portraying such hatred to my culture of people who share my colors.

And so I was in denial. And I do applaud the actions of the administration and president Borne for not only expelling that student, those two students, but disassociating our university with that fraternity.

CABRERA: We just heard an interview with a former member of the SAE fraternity there. And he said, these are not my brothers. You have to wonder how those in this video got to a point where they thought it was OK to say the words they were saying. Do you believe there's a broader culture of intolerance or

discrimination there at the university that needs to be addressed, or is this just an issue amongst this particular frat?

BAILEY: You know, I believe that fraternity especially, they have shown over and over that they're not interested in being inclusive of all cultures. And Our university is not like that. As president Borne has said, for the most part, we have continued to progress. We have been great in doing diversity enrichment programs and we're going to continue to do that on this campus.

CABRERA: How do you think this incident has impacted just the morale, especially of African-Americans at OU?

BAILEY: You know, I am, along with my peers and friends, I am frustrated that we are still continuing to have these kinds of dialogues, that they're still needed. I've told a couple of friends earlier today that, you know, I'm tired of having these conversations. I'm ready to have some effective programs implemented policies. I want to see some diversity workshops for pledges into these fraternities and sororities that tell, you know, what are the consequences for actions such as this?

CABRERA: And I want to talk a little bit more about the fallout because when you talk about consequences, we now know a high school football recruit has since de-committed from attending and playing for the University of Oklahoma. We also have heard from a current player, a linebacker there, Eric Striker, who posted profanity late video response in social media. Let's listen to what he told CNN's Don Lemon and we'll chat on the back side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC STRIKER, LINEBACKER, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA: I was angered and I was, you know, I was outraged, and kind of, you know, had a video that, you know, just quickly showed my anger. But you know, like I said, I apologize for the profanity, but I'm not apologizing about how I felt because that's how I felt in my heart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: That video triggering a lot of emotions. Are you concerned about the trickle-down effect, so to speak, and whether this incident will impact not only recruiting from sports but deter students in general from attending the University of Oklahoma?

BAILEY: You know, quite frankly, I applaud them for sticking to their decisions, their morale in deciding to go where it's best for them. But I do want to encourage those who are considering the University of Oklahoma. This is a great place to study. And we're going to continue to progress.

I am concerned about the trickle-down effect from this incident. I also applaud Eric Striker for his comment. Quite frankly, I wouldn't have apologized for neither one, coursing or my emotions because it is how I felt at that moment. And you need to be honest, completely honest about how you feel at that moment. And you need to be honest, completely honest about how you feel. And that's we become a democracy, a better democracy and better university at that.

CABRERA: All right, BerThaddaeus Bailey, thank you so much for joining us.

Up next, a letter from the Republican senators to Iran saying any nuclear deal might not hold after the president is out of office. That's causing a lot of controversy. We're back in 60 seconds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: We are tracking reaction this hour to an open leader to Iran signed by 47 Republican U.S. senators and that basically warns that any nuclear deal President Obama makes with Iran could be canceled by a future U.S. president if it fails to approve by the Congress.

Now, this letter has angered both the White House and Iranian leaders.

Let's discuss. Karim Sadjadpour is joining us. He is an Iran analyst from (INAUDIBLE) for international people. Still with us, A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of "the Hill" newspaper.

Karim, I want to start with you. We have the president is saying Republicans are teaming up essentially with the bad guys, with Iran's hardliners. Senator Harry Reid calling this a juvenile political attack that could empower U.S. adversaries. The vice president, Jo Biden, saying this letter could had dangerous implications for future president. What are your thoughts? Could this move backfire?

KARIM SADJADPOUR, IRAN ANALYST: I think it has already backfired in that the Democrats who were skeptical of these Iran negotiations are probably less likely to -- I think it's backfired that the hard-liners and conspiracy theorists in Iran who long argue and believe that President Obama is either too weak to deliver a deal or the U.S. Congress will not make good on the deal, those folks have been vindicated. So I think the letter has really had the opposite effect than it seemingly intended.

CABRERA: A.B., this letter has been called unprecedented by critics. But we do know that Democrats in the past have interjected themselves in to diplomacy against the wishes of other president. And I just want to give a couple of examples. We have House Democrats, three of them, who went to Iraq back in 2002 trying to head off the Iraq war. Even Nancy Pelosi went to Syria back in 2007 to meet with president Bashar al-Assad against the wishes of then the Bush administration at the time. So are Democrats' complaints about this letter a little disingenuous?

A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, THE HILL: Well, it is not unprecedented as you point out this kind of interference. It's happened among both parties in the past. The problem is, I agree that this is actually defeating the purpose of the Republicans which is to get a veto-proof majority for the legislation that Senator Bob Corker has drafted. He is one of the seven Republicans who would not sign onto this letter for this very reason. He thought it might dissuade Democrats from joining a strong veto-proof bipartisan majority demanding this deal, however it shakes out, come to the Congress for a 60-day review. This allows, as our other guest said, Democrats to say, wait, this is becoming a partisan issue. This is a totally Republican letter. You're trying to embarrass the Republicans. I mean, you are trying to embarrass President Obama.

And so, what it does is it creates a situation where Democrats are back in the corner and Republicans, like Senator Corker who are trying to get a strong bipartisan majority together to veto proof, to show that Congress is a co-equal branch and needs to be involved in these negotiations now is going to lose numbers on the vote as a result of the letter.

CABRERA: Now, it wasn't all Republicans who signed this letter. In fact, there were seven Republican senators who didn't sign the letter including Susan Collins. And this is what she said and I quote her. She says, "I don't think that the ayatollah is going to be particularly convinced by a letter from members of the Senate, even when signed by a number of my distinguished and high ranking colleagues."

As you know, Karim, these negotiations with Iran includes several other countries including Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany. So realistically, how much influence could this letter have?

SADJADPOUR: What I'm worried about is that if you're sitting in Tehran, you are the supreme leader of Iran, this letter may make you feel that you can drive an even harder bargain knowing that if the U.S. or the Obama administration refuses to concede even more and talks fail, that you, Iran, won't be blamed for the failure of the negotiations. The blame will be put on the U.S. Congress or the Israeli prime minister who came to visit last week.

And so I think this in a way emboldens the hard-liners in Tehran to try to drive for a much harder bargain. And again, if talks fail, they feel they will win the blame game. The blame will be placed elsewhere.

CABRERA: In fact, the U.S. could now be blamed because of this influence. People could say it was an influence of the letter.

A.B., we always hear the saying about politics stopping at the water's edge. Now we know four of the GOP senators who thinking about running for president including Marco Rubio, Senator Paul, Cruz, Graham, they all signed this letter. So, what does it tell you?

STODDARD: Well, it's interesting. Like I said, the people who are counting votes and counting heads an want a strong majority for congressional involvement in this deal, didn't want to be on the letter. People do want -- people who disagree with what they're hearing are the components of the deal want to make their disagreements known.

But this kind of talking point that was in the letter that any new president could undo this deal could have been a talking point that people said on Sunday shows, it could have been in an op-ed in a major newspaper, the Iranian so wouldn't known about it. But to take this aggressive posture and make it an open letter to the regime is a very aggressive tactic that I said, you know, the senator - the chairman of the foreign relations committee who is trying to be so involve in this deal didn't sign it, it gives a good indication.

President Obama wants a deal. But after a deal, if it fails, he wants the Iranians to take the blame, not the U.S.

CABRERA: All right, A.B. Stoddard, Karim Sadjadpour, thank you so much.

And that does it for me. THE LEAD with Jake Tapper starts right now.