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Excessive Force in Baltimore; Policy or Culture; Two Hostages Killed in U.S. Drone Strike on al Qaeda. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired April 23, 2015 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: A little too long. Michelle Kosinski, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Still to come here in the NEWSROOM, protesters are demanding answers. Why did a man die while in police custody? But questions about the use of police force by Baltimore's police have long dogged (ph) the department. We're going to take a closer look at that. The history behind it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: In Baltimore, the death of a man in police custody has fueled protest in the streets and concerns at city hall. But accusations of police brutality are painfully familiar, with some blaming the department's culture for allowing a problem to erode public trust and cost millions and millions of dollars in lawsuits. CNN's Jason Carroll reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWD: Tell the truth and stop the lie, all black men don't have to die.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It has been dubbed, originally without irony, charm city. Baltimore, Maryland, has long held a reputation for being one of the most dangerous cities to police in the nation, with a history of brutality on both sides of the badge.

It's a reputation that Freddie Gray's death has brought to light once again. Gray was young, African-American, had a slew of previous drug- related arrests and he spent time in the housing projects here. In short, Gray represented one of Baltimore's most watched populations. Watched by police on foot patrol and watched by an audience of millions in television depictions.

[09:35:09] Baltimore has served as the go-to example of urban tension in shows like "The Wire" or "Homicide: Life on the Streets." Shows based on neighborhoods dotted with death. This map, compiled by "The Baltimore Sun," shows 211 homicides in this city last year. So far, 2015 has seen 63. These numbers are vastly better than in previous decades when crime was notoriously high, more than 350 homicides in 1993 alone.

At the time, police recruitment videos used the slogan, "and you thought your job was tough."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How'd you like it if we quit?

TAPPER: It is a dangerous job that's difficult to do without criticism.

Today the Baltimore Police Department is working hard to improve its relations with those whom it serves, posting photos of outreach efforts and successful busts on Twitter. It's an effort of which the mayor is proud.

MAYOR STEPHANIE RAWLINGS-BLAKE, BALTIMORE: I think Baltimore has had a very challenging history when it comes to the black community and the police department. We've done a lot of work and made a lot of progress.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's time that we get justice.

TAPPER: But for many in this city, these efforts do little in the wake of videos such as these, showing officer brutality, punching, hitting. Residents say it's all too common.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Freddie Gray is not the only one they've beat up in these last -- past two weeks.

TAPPER: In 2014, "The Baltimore Sun" reported that the city had paid more than $5.7 million in judgments and settlements for alleged police misconduct since 2011. This includes six figure settlements for allegedly slamming a pregnant woman to the ground, for killing an unarmed Marine veteran and for beating a church deacon with no previous record.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've heard the complaints. I've heard the distrust. And it is clear, there's still work to be done.

TAPPER: Baltimore Police called for a government investigation. Now, less than a year later, the Department of Justice will investigate the force once again.

RAWLINGS-BLAKE: We need stronger enforcement and more tools to hold officers accused of wrongdoing accountable.

TAPPER: In a city as hard to police as this one, the biggest challenge may be a department trying to police itself.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: That was Jake Tapper reporting.

And joining me now from Baltimore, Monique Dickson, senior policy counsel for the criminal justice -- for criminal justice at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Thank you for being with me. I appreciate it.

MONIQUE DIXON, SENIOR POLICY COUNSEL, NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE FUND: Thank you, Poppy. Good morning.

HARLOW: Looking at the history, right, the history of the Baltimore Police Department, and we should note, as Jake did, the changes, the positive changes some there are trying to make within the department. Do you think still, though, there is a culture problem?

DIXON: Yes, there is a cultural problem. In the past three years, five black men have died after being in the custody of Baltimore police officers. Last year, 19-year-old George King died after he was struck multiple times with a Taser by Baltimore Police. Earlier this year, 30-year-old Trayvon Scott died after experiencing trouble breathing while he was in a holding cell at a local precinct here in Baltimore city. So -- and now this week we are dealing with the death of Freddie Gray, who sustained serious spinal injuries during an arrest.

So in addition to that, according to the Baltimore Police Department's website, since January of last year, there have been 40 incidents of police use of force in the city. So there is certainly a use of force problem here. And against that back drop, we can understand why you are seeing the mass protests and demonstrations going on around the city in which residents and family members of people who have been -- died in police custody are asking for a transparent investigation, accountability and police reform.

HARLOW: Monique, I do want to also get your response to this, because your organization has called for several changes in Baltimore in the wake -- the wake of the cases that you just mentioned. One of the case -- one of the things you're asking for is for police officers to use body cameras, to collect and to disseminate that information to family members, to the public, in a timely manner. Are you getting any traction on that front?

DIXON: Well, our call for police body worn cameras is a national call. We realize that, you know, having -- well, it's clear from the lack of information that we have about Freddie Gray's case that there is a need for body worn cameras to document interactions between police and civilians.

[09:40:05] But we also realize that those body worn camera programs have to come with some limitations, and we believe and we have called for federal agencies and for federal legislation that would require any police department that received funding for body worn cameras to have certain protocols in place. Protocols that would protect the privacy of innocent bystanders and victims, protocols requiring the collection of use of force data, stop, question and frisk data, as well as protocols requiring officers to undergo use of force training and de-escalation training tactics. But that training should be monitored and enforced. And when officers do not comply with training and other policies, that they are disciplined appropriately.

HARLOW: Monique Dixon joining us with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund from Baltimore. Appreciate you coming on the program. Thanks, Monique.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

HARLOW: Breaking news into us here at CNN. We have just learned that President Obama will speak at the top of the hour, 10:00 Eastern. He is going to speak about a counterterrorism operation in which there were deaths. Let's bring in Jim Sciutto from Washington.

What do we know, Jim, about what the president is going to say?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Poppy, this is truly remarkable news and sad news, in fact. The president going to announce, and the White House has now confirmed this, that in a U.S. strike inside Afghanistan, Pakistan earlier this year, that Dr. Warren Weinstein, he's an American who was kidnapped by al Qaeda in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2011, that he was inadvertently killed in this American air strike. In that same strike, an Italian hostage of al Qaeda, Giovanni Lo Porto, killed as well. The president's going to say, and the White House saying now, of course, they did not know that the American, Dr. Weinstein, and the Italian were present when this strike took place, but they were unfortunately killed in that strike.

In addition to those hostages, the American and the Italian, in that strike, an al Qaeda leader, Ahmad Akmed (ph) Farouq, was killed. And in other strike, and this is the truly significant one on the goo side of this news, and that is that Adam Gadahn, an American who has been a spokesman for al Qaeda in effect, a messenger. He's appeared in a number of al Qaeda videos over the last 10 years, Adam Gadahn, that he was killed in a separate strike in January. Gadahn, really a remarkable story. He was from California. A Jewish and Christian background. Converted to Islam and then joined al Qaeda and became really a prominent messenger, propagandist for al Qaeda, that he was killed in a second air strike.

But really the headline here in addition to his death is that inadvertently, by accident, an American air strike killed an American hostage, Dr. Warren Weinstein, as well as an Italian hostage. Truly remarkable news. The White House saying that this was classified information but that the president decided to declassify it and share that information with the American public today.

HARLOW: And, Jim, this is what our intelligence, our armed forces, the president, in making the decision to authorize this strike, runs up against every time. How do you walk that line between killing the terrorist, rescuing American hostages and doing so in a safe way? Do we have any color behind how this decision was made?

SCIUTTO: Well, what the White House is saying is that the operation targeted an al Qaeda-associated compound where the White House says they had no reason to believe that either hostage was being present -- was present, located in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is where we know that al Qaeda and al Qaeda leaders and operatives have been holing up for a number of years. That's, of course, the area where Osama bin Laden was killed in that special forces, that SEAL Team 6 operation.

So this is one of the difficulties here. You're -- you're targeting al Qaeda compounds there with intelligence but often partial intelligence. And this is a risk. But, really, an outlier of a risk, Poppy, here, the idea that these hostages would be held there. Really no way for them to know, but it's a risk you take. And -- and let's look at this in context as well, Poppy, because we know that in the last year, Americans who were held in Syria by ISIS, as you remember, James Foley among them, where -- there were attempted rescues of those hostages which failed. Risky operations.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: They failed. And, of course, as we know, Foley and other Americans were killed, beheaded in videos by hostages -- by ISIS. So it shows the difficulty. It is hard to rescue Americans and foreigners, hostages held by ISIS and al Qaeda and other terror groups. And this is really just the sad result -- the sad result of one of these strikes here.

HARLOW: Our heart goes out to the families as well as they have learned the news, but now we are all learning it publicly.

[09:45:05] Jim Sciutto, thank you. Stand by. Jim will join us again at the top of the hour, 10:00 Eastern, when we do expect President Obama to speak.

I do want to go to White House correspondent, Michelle Kosinski now. Michelle, what do we know?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi Poppy. I'm reading from a statement now that the White House just put out.

They describe this as being with tremendous sorrow that they report this. And this is interesting. I mean, three Americans killed, one of them a hostage of l Qaeda since 2011. Two of them Americans working with al Qaeda. And in the past, other counterterrorism operations or attempts to rescue hostages, I mean, the White House will sometimes explain the timeframe, what some might try to criticize as a delay in conducting the operation, and the White House will go out of its way to say, well, we waited until it was absolutely certain that this was going to be safe and possible for everybody involved. But in this case they're saying we had no reason to believe either hostage was present -- that's the American hostage as well as the Italian -- located in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. No words can fully express our regret over this terrible tragedy.

So we're soon to hear from the president. We're expecting this statement in the briefing room at around 10:00 this morning. But they describe some of the president's sense on this, within the lengthy statement that the White House just put out.

And I'll read a paragraph from that now. "The president directed the information being shared today, which was importantly classified until now, be declassified and shared with the American people. He takes full responsibility for the operations and believes it's important to provide the American people with as much information as possible about our counterterrorism operations, particularly when they take the lives of fellow citizens. The uniquely tragic nature of the operation that resulted in the deaths of two innocent hostages is something we will do our utmost to insure is not be repeated. To this end, although the operation was lawful and conducted consistent with our counterterrorism policies, we are conducting a thorough, independent review to fully understand what happened and how we can prevent this type of tragic incident in the future."

So we expect the president to give more information on that, any more detail that the White House has now declassified and can be shared publicly, and we'll see if he'll take any questions on this as well, Poppy.

HARLOW: All right, Michelle Kosinski, stand by. I also want to bring in CNN intelligence and security analyst Bob Baer, who joins me on the phone. Bob, give us a sense of how common it is or unprecedented it is for the White House to release this information at this point in time?

BOB BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE & SECURITY ANALYST (via phone): I think the White House wanted to hold off as long as they could to confirm that, in fact, these tragic deaths occurred as a mistake. Once they did, they had to go public since there was a American citizen involved, and so they really had no choice. I think what this story tells us more than anything is these drone strikes are very messy, that the intelligence is never perfect. So many of them are signature strikes. We just look at a target and it looks like it's al Qaeda and they fire a missile at it. And this, a -- a tragedy like this was inevitable, almost.

HARLOW: But Jim -- sorry, Bob, to you, you say they're very messy, which, yes, we have seen that. At the same point in time, the president, as commander in chief, has to have a certain amount of information, a certain amount of certainty, before he does give the authorization for a strike like this. Can you take us behind what it is like in terms of the intelligence gathering to present a case to the president where he does feel certain enough to give the green light?

BAER: Well, they'll take a look at a compound, and with almost 100 percent certainty they'll decide if it's an al Qaeda compound. They've been able to follow the people coming and going, their phones, their cars. They'll collect intelligence for months and months, and they'll go to the president and say this is an al Qaeda compound.

The problem is they can't see inside. I mean, these drones can only watch what's on the outside. You can't see in the rooms or the basements or anything else. And if they move those hostages in the middle of the night or earlier, there's no way for the CIA or the military to know that. These drones have always been risky. They've known it. On the other hand, they have broken the back of al Qaeda. But, you know, you can't prevent tragedies like this.

HARLOW: Bob, thank you. Stand by as well.

Peter Bergen joins us on the phone as well. Peter, let me ask you this. In the first paragraph of this release from the White House, it says that at this compound where they were targeting al Qaeda leaders, they had, quote, "no reason to believe either hostage was present."

Do you read that as the White House saying they believed that they knew where those hostages were and that was a different location than this compound?

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST (via phone): I just don't think it's very clear.

[09:50:05] Clearly these hostages would have been not going outside. They would have been kept inside. So, you know, they wouldn't have aerial surveillance to allow them to see that a hostage was being held.

HARLOW: I want Jim Sciutto to join us again to talk about it again. Jim, what is your take on that? Because they say in this release they had no reason to believe the hostages were present there when they carried on the this strike. Why would they believe that?

SCIUTTO: Well, the fact is they clearly didn't know where the hostages were because they've been trying to find them. And we've seen the difficulty of doing that. It is hard to find hostages; it's hard to find individual al Qaeda leaders. It took more than a decade, nearly a decade, to find Osama bin Laden. It took months to find the Americans held by ISIS in Syria, James Foley, et cetera. As it turned out, they got to the right place but they got there too late. So it's both location and time. Those things are extremely difficult to do with any certainty. So here they had intelligence indicating that this was an al Qaeda compound, but they did not know that you had an American and an Italian hostage there.

This is the intense difficulty of doing this, and we've seen risks taken by this administration. Some of those risks worked out. You'll remember, with the bin Laden raid, famously, the president was told there was 50 percent certainty that bin Laden was there. They went in, they found him, they killed him. They had operations that attempted to rescue James Foley and other Americans held by ISIS. They didn't get there in time. They didn't have the right information there, and yet they took a risk. You had another operation, you remember, in Somalia, where in the course of that operation, another hostage was killed, an international hostage, caught up in crossfire.

These are extremely risky operations. They're hard to get right. And here's one with just the -- just the worst in collateral damage, that totally soulless term that is used in strikes like this. This is really a worst case scenario here. And I think the president clearly felt the need to get it out, and get it out in public. And it'll be interesting to see what he says at the top of the hour.

HARLOW: And Jim, some people have been very critical of the drone program because of things like this. Do you believe that this will at all call the drone program more into question, will lead to more debate about it?

SCIUTTO: It's going to raise some hard questions. Because, Poppy, the principal objection to the drone program to this point has been civilian casualties on the ground.

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: And that -- you hear that from the Pakistanis; you hear that from the Afghans, Somalis; in Yemen as well. And that has led to huge anti-Americanism, particularly in Pakistan, when I travel there.

So here you have civilian casualties on the ground, one of whom is an American, and an Italian, a close ally. And then you have two other Americans killed from the sky, without due process, which is a whole other question here. Adam Gadahn, no question he was in al Qaeda, not a good guy, but he was killed in airstrike. Ahmed Farouk who was killed in the same operation, says the White House, that killed Dr. Weinstein and the Italian, Giovanni Lo Porto, killed from the sky.

Far fewer objections to that from the critics than the civilians, and certainly these Americans, but this is all part of that drone debate. Can a president make a decision to kill an American from the sky without due process? One, you have the downside and the damage from civilian casualties, which they minimize but they can't eliminate. And now you have this other risk that really hasn't been thought about. You strike a compound and you accidentally kill an American and an Italian hostage.

And we had, as I mentioned just a few moments ago, this is really not the first time this has happened because you had that rescue operation just a few months ago in Somalia, I believe, and I'll double-check this, where a hostage, I believe a South African hostage, was killed in the crossfire. It's the risk you take with these operations. And it's another thing to throw into that bin, are they worth it? Are the drone strikes worth it?

HARLOW: Jim Sciutto, thank you very much.

Again, the headline here, an American hostage held by al Qaeda since 2011, Dr. Warren Weinstein, was unintentionally killed in a drone strike targeting al Qaeda. Also an Italian citizen, Giovanni Lo Porto, being held hostage by al Qaeda since 2012 also killed. The president will address it at 10:00 Eastern. We'll bring thank you that live. Quick break. We're back on the other side.

[09:54:32]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Breaking news just into us here at CNN. We are expecting President Obama to speak at 10:00 a.m. Eastern to talk about what is just a horrific tragedy, the White House describing it as a terrible tragedy -- an American citizen and Italian citizen accidentally killed in a drone strike in January on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that killed some al Qaeda operatives, but also inadvertently killed an American, Dr. Warren Weinstein, and an Italian, Giovanni Lo Porto. He was held since 2012. Dr. Weinstein had been held by al Qaeda since 2011.

Let's go straight to Michelle Kosinski. She joins me from the White House. What else can we expect to hear from the president this morning about this?

KOSINSKI: Yes, well, there's a lot of information in the statement that the White House just released. I mean, these are three Americans killed in two separate counter-terrorism operations -- one American hostage, you mentioned Warren Weinstein, and also two other Americans including Adam Gadahn, a notorious American member and, you could say, spokesperson for al Qaeda. So we expect the president to explain what happened as well as justify what happened at least to some extent.

But you look at the tone of this statement. They use -- they started out, in fact, with tremendous sorrow. "No words can fully express our regret over this terrible tragedy." "The president takes full responsibility for these operations."

That said, they also within the statement say that the counter- terrorism operation was lawful and conducted consistent with our counter-terrorism policies. Those are some of the things we expect the president to say. And keep in mind, these operations happened back in January. They were classified up until now, but the White House explains that the president thought it was right and necessary to declassify this information so that, first of all, the American public knows and also so they can try to assess what happened and for the White House to make sure that this does not happen again.

[10:00:07] I think it's interesting, when you read the details, the limited amount of detail that it's in this statement, there was clearly the intel there to conduct these operations, to at least have a reasonable certainty that the targets of the operations were there, but the intel was not there to indicate that two hostages were present, one of them American.