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Republicans Fumble Iraq Question; U.S. Forces Kill ISIS Leader; Biker Brawl. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 18, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:02]

"CHONGO CHUCK" TUCKER, FRIEND OF DEAN POTTER: You know, he said he was going to be safer. And I -- I know how he rig things. He's a safe person. I just don't understand how this happened, and especially both of them.

There's -- it's just one of those happenstantial events that you don't expect to happen. You know, there's always happenstance. And that is probably what is the case here. It's just one of those rare things that happen. And it -- I don't -- it's my evaluation would be that it shouldn't have happened, notwithstanding some rare event.

(CROSSTALK)

TUCKER: Go ahead.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm sorry. I'm sorry you lost your friend, Chongo Chuck. And thank you so much for taking the time and remembering him with me today. Appreciate it.

TUCKER: Well, thank you.

BALDWIN: We continue on, top of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

And we're beginning with this biker brawl and a gunfight that was so chaotic, investigators say they're trying to figure out if the nine bikers killed were shot by other bikers or by law enforcement, and it wasn't just guns used here. Reportedly knives, and clubs and chains and bats were all used. More than 100 weapons apparently were confiscated, and 170 people were arrested after police say at least five biker gangs went at each other and at police. This was Sunday in Waco, Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SGT. W. PATRICK SWANTON, WACO POLICE DEPARTMENT: As we pulled up on scene, the shooting at individual bikers from bikers turned towards us. Our officers took fire and responded appropriately, appropriately returning fire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Caught in the midst of all of this, customers just inside the businesses at the marketplace where this whole fight happened. Some peered through windows to see what was happening outside of this parking lot. This cell phone clip was just posted online.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh. Someone's been shot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Over there by the...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Got everybody on the ground.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: All right, here's what we're -- we're hearing this whole thing. It started inside of Twin Peaks, this restaurant, in the bathroom apparently, where one witness says she hid out with other customers in the restaurant's freezer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNIFER CURRIER, WITNESS: It was really, really scary. We didn't know if somebody was going to come back. They said people outside the doors had guns. It was scary. I'm still scared. It was -- I have never been around anything like this. It's crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Waco police say the local Twin Peaks restaurant could have done more to prevent the violence, saying the restaurant didn't cooperate in the days leading up to this biker event Sunday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SWANTON: We attempted to talk with the local staff here at that restaurant, made them aware of issues that we were aware of. We didn't get any assistance from them. We will be very open in public about that and very transparent about it. Chips are going to fall where they may with that company or with that local management issue here at Twin Peaks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Well, I can tell you now that Twin Peaks is shut down for the time being. Its alcohol license has been revoked for a week. And its franchise license has been yanked by Twin Peaks corporate. The chain said this in a statement.

Let me read this for you. "The management team of the franchise restaurant in Waco chose to ignore the warnings and advice from both the police and our company and did not uphold the high security standards we have in place to ensure everyone is safe at our restaurants. We will not tolerate the actions of this relatively new franchise" -- end quote. Waco police say there is the possibility here of more violence, saying

gangs are seeking to retaliate, not just against rivals, but possibly against police. So, who are these biker gangs, and how do they operate, why do they operate, what drives them?

Let me bring in my colleague Sara Sidner, who just interviewed someone who went undercover and infiltrated one of these gangs.

Tell me what they said.

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's an absolutely fascinating look at how these gangs work. He talked about the fact that you heard police saying five gangs. And they sort of said, look, there are five gangs involved with this.

He said, look, just three of those gangs were sort of feeder gangs like you have in baseball where you have a team that's the team that's the feeder team to the big leagues. And then there were two that were the big leagues. And they are very well put together. They think through all of these things. And they're looking at who they're going to let into their gang.

It's fascinating what he said caused this, because we heard from the police earlier that it may have been caused by a fight over a simple thing like a parking space. And we have seen those in reality between regular folks. And this was between gang members. But this person who has infiltrated gangs for nearly five years, and is now out of doing that, but has been very involved in helping law enforcement understand how they work, he said there was a very different reason for why this shooting happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: In this particular case, do you think it's at all possible that it started over simply a fight over a parking space?

[15:05:01]

CHARLES FALCO, FORMER INFORMANT: No, I know what started it. And what it's all over is we're all familiar with "Sons of Anarchy" and how these biker gangs wear that vest that has their colors on the back or it has their established gang name.

Each -- each of these biker gangs will have a center patch on the back that establishes their symbol. The top will have their actual name of their biker bang. And the bottom will have a state rocker. That state rocker is where they're from. But that's where the -- that state rocker tells you that they're claiming that state at their territory.

The Bandidos are the biggest motorcycle gang in Texas, and they don't allow other motorcycle gangs to enter that state. They will allow other motorcycle clubs to exist, but they're not allowed to wear that state bottom rocker. If they do, they face the onslaught of the Bandidos. What happened is this club, motorcycle club, in Texas called the

Cossacks decided that they were being enough now to go ahead and wear the Texas bottom rocker and basically tell the Bandidos that they're ready for war against them.

SIDNER: So this is a territorial fight.

FALCO: It's territorial, yes.

SIDNER: Can you give me some idea if you think that will this spark a bigger war between these two gangs and put the public in danger?

FALCO: Well, it's definitely on now. If you look at the other big gangs that are at war, the war never stops. If you go back and watch news reports for the last five years, every eight or nine months, there's some attack from one biker gang against another, either a killing or a shooting or something, not to this magnitude, but they're constantly happening.

So this war between these two gangs will escalate for the rest of -- for the rest of their creation. As long as they exist, they will be at war now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: As long as they exist, they're going to be at war now. And that, he said, should be also a warning to the public, you know, because the public can obviously, if they're hanging out in these bars, if they're going to some of their functions, not -- if part of the gang was just going to the biker functions, that they could really be in danger because these two will continue to fight now for as long as they feel like it -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: The police were saying it's incredible just because of also the location that other innocent bystanders weren't injured. Right?

Fascinating interview, Sara. And I'm wondering. We talk about the different gangs involved, as you point out, feeder gangs, major league gangs, why aren't police naming them?

SIDNER: You know, I think I asked that very question to the person who infiltrates the gangs, Falco, as he likes to be called.

And he said for a very good reason. And that is to try and not give them street cred, because for them, some of the violence and some of the things that they get up to gives them a name on the street, makes them bigger and badder, for example, than the next gang.

And so one of the reasons why police may not be naming them at this point and naming all the different gangs that were there is because they don't want to give them a bigger status on the streets. And so they have kind of kept that information to themselves. He said you will certainly see it come out, though, when all of this starts going to court -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Sara Sidner, thank you so much for that. And I just want to stay on this because I talked to this biker gang

expert, Detective Alfred Brown Jr., from the DeKalb County gang unit in the Atlanta unit. He is quite familiar with this problem. He talked to me about how police prepare when they hear about threats from biker gangs, possible oncoming retribution.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALFRED BROWN JR., POLICE DETECTIVE: Well, of course we're always aware of gang activity. We try to stay in touch with other law enforcement agencies to discuss gang movement and what they may be doing and what may be occurring across the country.

We try to stay abreast of gangs at every possibility. We understand that they're violent, and we try to put measures in place to try to prevent that.

BALDWIN: I mean, clearly, by hearing one sergeant saying it was the most gruesome scene he'd ever come across, incredibly violent. And when you talk about biker gangs, detective, who are these people? I know you said being incarcerated is a rite of passage.

BROWN: Right, well. Well, biker gangs started a while back, right after Second World War.

BALDWIN: Oh, wow.

BROWN: And, basically, they're the 1 percenters. The motorcycle association made a statement that 99 percent of bikers are law-abiding citizens. Then that 1 percent, which the biker gangs are, by that very definition, they consider themselves outlaws. So, their whole premise is to commit crime and to be violent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Detective, thanks again.

Meantime, a major turn in the war against ISIS. American forces engage in hand-to-hand combat during a secret raid to take out an ISIS leader. But was the risk worth the reward?

Also ahead, a hacker says he took control of a plane in midair. Hear how he says he did it through the plane's Wi-Fi entertainment system and what U.S. officials have to say about that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:14:27]

BALDWIN: The U.S. is now vowing to take back Ramadi as we get word that after months of intense fighting, ISIS now controls this key Iraqi city, just 70 miles from the capital Baghdad, this huge loss happening in Iraq as a different story is emerging from Syria.

U.S. special forces carrying out a rare and incredibly dangerous raid deep, deep in ISIS-controlled territory. A U.S. official telling CNN the troops with the Army's elite Delta Force stormed the target with Osprey aircraft and Black Hawk helicopters. But within seconds of landing, they were fired upon. You had ISIS militants grabbing women, grabbing children, using them as human shields.

[15:15:05]

But, incredibly, we are told U.S. forces managed to avoid killing them while simultaneously taking out a dozen ISIS fighters and one significant man here, Abu Sayyaf, a moneyman responsible for ISIS' key revenue stream, being oil, and instead of killing his wife, the U.S. captured her, along with what officials say are reams and reams of ISIS intelligence.

So, I want to get into all of that with Lieutenant Colonel James Reese, former U.S. Delta Force commander and CNN global affairs analyst.

Colonel, awesome having you on.

First, just beginning on Ramadi, you have intel from your sources in Iraq about the Shia militia and some movements in the wake of ISIS grabbing the city. What do you know?

JAMES REESE, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Right.

So, our sources in Baghdad today said that the prime minister has signed a letter saying he's going to mobilize now the Hashid Shaabi, which is the militia that were very critical in the takedown of Tikrit now that have come of out there. They have put them on their vacation, on their holiday. Now the call is for them to cancel their holiday, cancel their vacation, get back to their units, get mobilized, be prepared to move to Al-Anbar.

BALDWIN: And Ramadi is significant why? Because geographically between Syria and Baghdad?

REESE: And that's where Ramadi is.

BALDWIN: Right.

REESE: So, Al-Anbar is the province or the state. And you drive northwest out on the Euphrates River, past the airport, through Fallujah, out to Ramadi, and now you're into -- that's Al-Anbar province.

BALDWIN: OK. That's Ramadi. That's one of the stories.

The other story, this raid in Syria. And my first question to you, we just mentioned this ISIS leader's wife who they captured, who's now in Iraq, presumably they're interrogating.

REESE: Sure.

BALDWIN: What kinds of questions would they be asking of her and do you think she talks?

REESE: Yes, I believe she talks.

Two, they ask her about everyday activity. Who is he meeting with? Who is he speaking with? Are there any other of the key leaders that they know that they will put pictures in front of? Has Baghdadi been there? Have any other high-value targets been to visit this guy, been in this area? What else is in this area? What did we miss in this small time we were on the ground? What are his travel patterns? What is he doing?

BALDWIN: What's in it for her to talk?

REESE: Well, you know, one of the things I see is, is they talk about this, but a lot of the women that I have seen throughout the Middle East are very, very smart. They know what's going on. And, unfortunately, at times, they're suppressed.

BALDWIN: By their husbands.

REESE: By the regime, by the husbands, by some of their society.

(CROSSTALK)

REESE: Others not, others very open. I have got employees that work for me, very open, great family folks. But some of them, especially with ISIS and their mentality, they suppress them. These women are smart. They know what's going on around them.

BALDWIN: So they could get some key intel on movements of other leaders from this wife. What about -- we know that they grabbed computers from the home.

REESE: Right. Right.

BALDWIN: What do you think they're hoping to find there?

REESE: Well, this is intelligence. This -- everything the Joint Special Operations Command does with their tier units when they go in and conduct these operations, capturing and killing is what the mission is. And always capture first. We want to try to capture first. The kill part of the mission is only if the threat comes about. We want the intelligence. We want to take down this network.

Remember, to defeat a network, it must be done against -- with a network. So, a network goes against the network. So, JSOC has formed a network throughout the years to take down this network. And these computers and phones, all the electronics that we have a joint exploitation unit that will go in now part while they're on the ground, part while they're flying back, and the remaining part all the analysts who will delve through this, because we want to get in front of the bad guys, get within their decision loop, get within their decision-making process and get in front of them and have this now.

BALDWIN: But this -- as far as U.S. military is concerned, this is some of the best of the best. These guys that we sent in to do this -- and my question would be, hearing what Congressman Adam Schiff had said, sort of questioning, is the risk really worth it? What if it didn't go the way it went?

REESE: If you have a Ferrari, do you keep it in the garage?

BALDWIN: I'm driving that sucker around.

REESE: Absolutely, because if you don't, the gaskets get bad and everything else.

Look, I'm very disappointed in the congressman. It's politics. These -- we pay millions -- us as taxpayers pay millions of dollars to have these men trained for this ability.

BALDWIN: But what if they're taken hostage? This is ISIS we're talking about.

REESE: So, as I said before, should we put tutus on, come home, and wait in the U.S. and wait for them to come to us?

BALDWIN: OK. I hear you. I hear you, Colonel.

REESE: We have to take the fight to the bad guys and use the best people to do it.

BALDWIN: OK. OK.

Colonel James Reese, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

REESE: You're welcome. Thanks.

And tonight, speaking of ISIS and the threat overseas, do not miss Fareed Zakaria's special report, "Blindsided: How ISIS Shook the World," 9:00 Eastern and Pacific, only here on CNN.

Coming up, it is the question that Republican presidential candidates seem to be struggling with this past week. Would you have authorized the invasion of Iraq had you known what you knew or what you know now? And we will share some of those responses coming up next.

[15:20:02]

Also, this one hacker says he was able to take control of an airplane mid-flight, even adjusting the altitude. We will look at how he may have done it and how the government is responding to that one.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Seems like a simple question. Given what we now know, would you have authorized the 2003 invasion of Iraq?

But a couple of top Republicans have struggled to give a concise answer on that, Senator and presidential hopeful Marco Rubio the latest to stumble here. And it took likely White House candidate Jeb Bush most of last week to eventually answer no.

Let me play this for you first. Try to follow Senator Rubio as he wrestles with the answer, the questioner, and the question itself. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Was it a mistake to go to war with Iraq?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Two -- it was not...

QUESTION: I'm asking you...

(CROSSTALK)

RUBIO: Yes, I understand, but that's not the same question.

QUESTION: But I'm asking -- but that's the question I'm asking you. Was it a mistake to go...

[15:25:00]

RUBIO: It was not a mistake for the president to decide to go into Iraq because at the time he was told...

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: I'm not asking you that. I'm asking you...

RUBIO: In hindsight.

QUESTION: Yes.

RUBIO: Well, the world is a better place because Saddam Hussein isn't there.

QUESTION: So, was it a mistake or not?

(CROSSTALK)

RUBIO: But I don't understand the question you're asking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: S.E. Cupp, good to see you. Let's chat about this, because I want to talk about -- you're a CNN political commentator, conservative columnist.

But I want to talk about Jeb Bush. I want to talk about Marco Rubio, and I want to talk about Hillary Clinton as well. But first...

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Oh, good.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Yes, we will go there. Don't you worry.

But with this Marco Rubio response, this is like a stock question.

CUPP: Yes.

BALDWIN: These are not gotcha questions. Why don't they have a stock answer?

CUPP: Yes and no.

I think a couple things are going on here. One, Republicans, like Democrats and Americans, have moderated on the issue of Iraq in the past few years. And so I think any time there's the appearance that a party or a person might be changing their mind on something, everyone's ears perk up and the scrutiny level, I think, intensifies. So, that's one thing.

Two, I think everyone watching what Jeb Bush went through last week, inexplicably unable to answer this question multiple times, has everyone very sensitive to the exact question that's being answered -- that is being asked. So Marco Rubio with Chris Wallace was saying, which question are you asking me?

But, thirdly, and the thing I think no one is really talking about, is this a patently bizarre phrasing of this question.

BALDWIN: How do you mean?

CUPP: It's essentially asking -- I mean, essentially asking, OK, would you make the same mistake that the other guy made, even if you had the information that would have told you it was the mistake?

I mean, it really isn't a great, clear way to ask an important question. This is like asking President Obama, if you knew now what you didn't know then, would you have gone into Somalia?

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: But a lot of these questions, as you very well know, a lot of these are hypotheticals. A lot them are hypotheticals.

CUPP: Yes.

BALDWIN: Why do you think people are so sensitive about it? What's happening then with Iraq, Iraq is still an issue right now. We're talking about Ramadi today. Why is this so sensitive, do you think?

CUPP: Yes.

Well, for the reasons I just discussed. I think the party -- the GOP is evolving on this issue. And so everyone is sort of wondering where the party is going to end on Iraq. Four years ago, the stock response to this was, of course it was the right decision to go into Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a dangerous man, and, frankly had the policies of this current administration not interfered, we might have won the war in Iraq.

That was the stock response. So, the party has moderated a little. And I think everyone's got hypersensitivity to where -- where to sort of land on this.

BALDWIN: OK. OK. And I was talking about Jeb Bush with Dana Bash last week. Both of us were saying, give the man some credit for putting himself out there, being open to being asked some of these questions and making some of the missteps, including even a question from a 19-year-old college student. On the flip side, you have Hillary Clinton, who's out there, but she's not out there talking to members of the media.

So we're not talking about her. We're not talking about her missteps. What do you think the strategy is there?

CUPP: Yes. Yes, she's out there. She's out there the way Will and Kate are out there when they come over to this country from England. She's waving, she's shaking hands, she's taking pictures. She's meeting with friendly audiences. She's not answering any tough questions. It's been over three weeks since she took a question from the media.

And she's the only person running who voted for the war in Iraq. So it would be nice to hear from her on this. But I actually don't fault Hillary Clinton. It's a strategy that's working for her. I fault the media, who continues to pedal her fluff pieces, you know, Hillary Clinton endorsing Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. Hillary Clinton gets Beyonce's support. Hillary Clinton pens lovely letter to lesbian couple in her campaign announcement video.

They pedal all of that while she's locking them out of substantive debate. So, if I'm "The Washington Post," for example, and I want to be taken seriously for my coverage on 2016, I would say to Hillary Clinton, I am not promoting your puff pieces until you actually talk to us on substance. And until they do that, she has no impetus.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Right. Right. And, I mean, listen, we have our colleagues here at CNN. When Hillary Clinton will open herself up to them, I'm positive that they will ask her that question.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: So, that said, that said, S.E., let me move on. And just finally, on a puff -- on a puff ending, if I may...

CUPP: Sure.

BALDWIN: ... President Obama apparently has officially joined Twitter. And let me just share with everyone his first tweet this morning. And he tweeted this. "Hello, Twitter. It's Barack. Really. Six years in, they're finally giving me my own account."

When you look at, I guess, the bio as part of the Twitter page, describes himself as dad, husband, and 44th president of the United States.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: Have you clicked follow yet, S.E. Cupp? CUPP: No, this is the first time hearing of it. Thank you for

breaking this news to me.

BALDWIN: You're welcome.

CUPP: No. I mean, this is usually what you see of a president at the end of his second term, sort of, you know, relaxing a little bit, getting a little bit more comfortable.

If he sort of lets his guard down a little in this next few years, couple years, I think we will see a softer side of the president.

BALDWIN: Hmm.

S.E. Cupp, always great to have you on. Thank you, my friend. I appreciate it.

CUPP: Thanks, Brooke.