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White House Briefing Room, North Lawn Evacuated; Josh Earnest Gives Press Briefing. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired June 09, 2015 - 14:30   ET

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

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[14:30:14] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: You can see some of the reporters and photo journalists with their own cell phones taking pictures of the moment. It's such a rarity to be cleared out of the briefing room mid-briefing.

Michelle Kosinski is our White House correspondent.

Let's try this again, Michelle. Can you hear me?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hey, Brooke. Yeah. The signals are not great here where we've been moved. It's sort of an interior courtyard in the executive office building. It's clear that the Secret Service did not want us to see what was going on in the North Lawn. First, they moved us to another point at the property on the White House grounds and as we saw an officer with a dog walking around, officers approaching to conduct their search, they moved us off of the property entirely. They moved us inside of a building. We're outdoors but it's within the executive office building. Yeah, really unusual to be moved off of the grounds entirely. And also, you know, they don't want us to see what is going on. There are cameras on the outside that I'm sure are capturing what is being seen there. But we can't with our own eyes see what is happening on the North Lawn.

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KOSINSKI: It's unnerving. But given the fact that there are suspicious things that happen on a regular basis, it's hard for people to get worked up about this. There are so many false alarms. Will there come a time when there's a real threat and people are going to be somewhat nonchalant about it because they have been so often.

I have so say, this is very unusual, though. This is one of those moments where it makes you wonder, what exactly is the nature of that threat and why take these measures as opposed to other times when far less was changed with the way that things were going day to day.

BALDWIN: I want to make sure that you can hear me, Michelle. Can you hear me? BALDWIN: I can, yes.

BALDWIN: Let me follow up on a point you made. Actually, the cameras outside are not capturing what is happening because we're being told that the cameras on the North Lawn are being tilted down and we just saw someone in the briefing room toss a T-shirt over one of the cameras in the corner. So they are clearly covering up so we can't see what is happening.

Guy's tell me what's going on. Is that the briefing room that's been covered up?

Yeah, so the picture on the right side is the inside of a T-shirt as it's being covered.

Michelle, have you ever seen anything like this at the White House?

KOSINSKI: No, definitely not. Like I said, usually, far less security measures that they are taking even when there is a threat, even when something is thrown over the fence, even when there is a suspicious package nearby. Usually, we're still standing on the property and might be moved off of the North Lawn if the threat is coming from the outside, but this is the first time that I or any of my colleagues -- I haven't been at the White House that long but we have worked at the White House for decades and they say they have never seen anything like this where we're moved off of the property entirely. What I'm hearing, too, is the people inside the White House residence, as well as the White House staff that works in the West Wing, I wonder if they have been moved off the property. We haven't been able to get any information at this point from the Secret Service. It's all ongoing at this point, obviously.

BALDWIN: Yeah, I haven't seen anything. You are on the phone from, where, the old executive building?

KOSINSKI: To the right of that is a street that is not accessible and there's the old executive office building that those big buildings are to the right of the White House if you're looking at it. So we moved through some doors there. We are not inside the building. We're in kind of a courtyard hallway. And that's where all of the journalists who are in the West Wing have been moved right now.

You know, it's interesting. We were almost primed for something like this to happen because of the threats that went on on Capitol Hill. And then there was something going on across the street from the White House. We all assumed it was a security threat and then we finally found out, no, it was just a movement because of -- day-to-day movements of people in the White House. So we sort of almost expected that that earlier incident was kind of a threat. Again, these things are bound to happen so regularly that people don't usually see it as anything out of the ordinary. The degree to which they've taken security precautions in this case, though, really makes you wonder what else is going on and why would this require all of us to be moved entirely off the property?

Like I said, we can't see what is going on. It looks like there's movement now. It looks like all of the journalists and others who were in the briefing room are now being moved outside of the executive office building back towards the White House.

Some of your guests might have mentioned this North Lawn area that is cleared. Is that right?

[14:35:47] BALDWIN: And this is when we're going to lose her.

Michelle Kosinski, that is great. Thank you for getting on the phone. Obviously, cell phone signal is spotty.

They have been more or less in this inner courtyard or this tunnel. She mentioned if you were looking at the right of the White House, to the right side, to the right of the White House. There is an executive building there and there is a tunnel in between. And now they are leaving. Where they are headed, it sounds like she said they were heading outside. We'll wait to get more guidance on where the White House press corps is being headed.

In the meantime, let's tie all of this together. These are live pictures inside the briefing room. We have an eye on that.

But, Joe Johns, can I bring you in?

Joe Johns, to tie these incidents together, we know that the briefing room has been cleared. We know that the North Lawn of the White House has been cleared. And we're looking at pictures from this TSA hearing earlier today. What happened there?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, that was a much more run-of-the-mill situation that you see on Capitol Hill all of the time. except that it took longer to clear it than you would have expected. It was a suspicious package report, which is what you get pretty regularly at the capitol complex. It was on the third floor of the Dirksen building, an office building that houses, among other things, the Homeland Security Committee. The Homeland Security Committee was having a hearing on TSA and its issues. So this report comes in that there was a suspicious package, somewhere around 3:40, right across the hall from where the hearing was going on. They cleared the room and then they began a search. They brought in bomb- sniffing dogs and they took some time to try to detect whether this package, if there was a package, was, in fact, anything significant. So the unusual thing about it is that it took a while.

Some other interesting facts were that the U.S. Capitol Police --

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BALDWIN: They are coming back in, Joe. Forgive me for jumping in, but the White House press corps is re-entering the briefing room. So that's a good sign.

Hang on, Joe.

Let me pivot to Pamela Brown, our justice correspondent, with an update of what is going on at the White House. Pamela, what are you hearing?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: We're hearing from the U.S. Secret Service that just before 2:00 today there was a bomb threat called in to the Metropolitan Police Department here in D.C. As a precaution, we're being told that the White House press briefing room was evacuated, as we know, and cleared after that, after we saw bomb- sniffing dogs and Secret Service in there clearing out the room. It has been cleared. We see people going back into the room right now.

And we're being told by the Secret Service that the evacuation was limited only to the White House press briefing room and does not affect any other section of the White House. But as a precaution, sweeps are ongoing as we speak.

We know, Brooke, as Michelle Kosinski talked about, that during all of this the robotic cameras inside that briefing room were blocked. It looked like someone threw a T-shirt over the robotic cameras from the various networks and the cameras in the North Lawn were also tilted down. But people are being allowed back into the briefing room. But we don't know at this point if that bomb threat called in targeting the press briefing room is connected to what happened earlier today, Brooke, on Capitol Hill when someone called in a bomb threat there and then Capitol Hill was cleared after that -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: Yeah. To Michelle Kosinski's point, talking to some of these correspondents and crews and writers, some of these folks have covered the White House for a long, long time, and all of them echoing the same sentiment that they've never seen anything like this.

Josh Earnest tweeted, the press secretary at the White House, "The White House daily briefing will resume shortly in the daily briefing room," which is the room we're looking at. "Has been cleared and hopefully it won't be long."

Pamela, it sounds like all clear.

BROWN: Sounds like all clear. But I think that while this is highly unusual, these threats are not necessarily uncommon. We hear about bomb threats, suspicious packages all the time but I think it's telling, Brooke, that they evacuated the press room like they did and then covered the cameras. Clearly they were taking this very seriously and didn't want to take any chances.

[14:40:26] BALDWIN: Pamela Brown, thank you so much, our justice correspondent.

And I want to watch and wait and see -- guys, let me know. Everyone is getting settled back in their seats after being evacuated for a period of time.

Joe Johns, we were talking to you. You were referencing the briefing on Capitol Hill that -- hit pause on that.

JOHNS: Just a little bit. Yes, Brooke. There's a report came across a couple of minutes ago forwarded to me by our managing editor, Adam Levine. And what we're being told, essentially -- I' reading it as we speak -- is that there are suggestions out there tonight that the same subject who called in the threat at Dirksen, also may have phoned in the White House threat. So the concerns, all of what is going on here, in fact, is somehow connected by the same individual calling on the telephone. That's the extent of the information that we have here. And I'd like to know a little bit more about it. I haven't been able to get the U.S. Capitol Police on the phone since the bomb threat situation over at Dirksen a while ago. It's been a little chaotic on Capitol Hill when you have things like this. But apparently a nexus under investigation between Capitol Hill and the White House -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: Joe Johns, thank you so much.

Michelle Kosinski, I see you through the camera lens here. You're standing at the front right at the briefing room. You're on the phone with us live in CNN. You've gotten the all clear but this is a rarity, what has happened.

KOSINSKI: Right. Now we finally know what happened. A bomb threat was called in, referring to the briefing room. And we're told that the Secret Service said only the briefing room was included in that threat, that the rest of the White House was not affected. That's why you didn't see anyone moving out of the residence.

We're going to pick up where we left off, in the middle of the daily briefing. We're hoping that the press secretary will give us a little more information on this. As well as was this connected to the other threats that happened earlier today at the capitol building. We've seen a number of these kinds of threats lately. Last week, there was a similar thing going on at the capitol. You know, every time, it's different. We can't always say that these things are connected because of the time frame but that is a possibility and it's something that we'll try to find out more later. We're moved off of the grounds for I guess it was 15 to 20 minutes. There are further restrictions on the grounds as far as we're seeing and it's back to business as usual after this threat -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: Final question to you. I have to imagine that there are a number of threats called in on any given day in some, you know, part of the White House. But the fact that, you know, they actually took the precaution, cleared all of you all out, swept it, swept the North Lawn, that's not something you were saying you or your colleagues who have covered the White House for years and years have seen.

KOSINSKI: Right. Some people have been here for decades and haven't seen anything like this, in terms of clearing one room and being sent out to the lawn. Clearly the officers didn't want us to see what was going on and moved off of the property and into a building. And in the past, what we've seen is even a potentially dangerous object is thrown over the fence onto the North Lawn outside, they don't take this level of security precautions all the time. And we have seen lockdown for everybody to stay in the building, time for people to move off of the North Lawn, and no one allowed to re-enter. They do this incrementally and in the best way possible, given the threat. The fact that we were moved a number of times off of the property tells you that this threat was something different and more serious. And as for connecting the dots, we'll maybe get more information from the press secretary. We're assuming the briefing is going to start again.

[14:44:54] BALDWIN: Right. That's what Josh Earnest tweeted a few minutes ago.

Michelle Kosinski, stay with me.

I just want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. You're watching CNN.

We've been covering breaking news here as we've been watching live pictures inside the Brady Briefing Room. Josh Earnest, the White House spokesperson, was mid-briefing about half an hour ago when they got the call to clear everyone out of the room. And then everyone calmly got out of their seats, were taken into an area in between the White House and the executive building, sort of herded together until they got the all clear to resume the briefing. We also know that the North Lawn of the White House, such as where Michelle Kosinski gives live reports, they had to be cleared out of the North Lawn. And just a couple hours prior, there was a TSA hearing on Capitol Hill. There was a report of a suspicious package. They have cleared out the hearing. And so they got the all clear on that as well.

And so that brings us to the current moment where the hearing has resumed. We're waiting for the daily White House briefing to happen. And hopefully, get an update as far as specifics as to why that happened.

Looking down here, we are hearing from the Secret Service that there was a bomb threat that was called in today concerning the White House briefing room. It was called into Metropolitan Police Department. That's Washington, D.C., police. And Secret Service saying, as a precaution, the White House press briefing room was evacuated. And, again, that evacuation was limited to the White House press briefing room and did not affect any other sections of the White House and so they performed a number of sweeps.

And you have the briefing getting ready to begin. This is Josh Earnest walking up behind the podium. Let's take it live.

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We'll try this again. Just to give you an update on what has transpired. As many of you may have heard from the Secret Service, shortly before 2:00 today, a telephonic bomb threat concerning the room that we are now all in was called in to the Metropolitan Police Department. The local police department contacted Secret Service officials who determined, that for the safety of all of us, they needed to evacuate the room and to sweep it. Fortunately, here at the White House, the Secret Service maintains the research that is necessary to quickly make the room safe and make sure that it's safe for all of us and they did that quickly and now we're ready to restart.

Before I get to your questions, I used our brief respite to get us more information in terms of your previous question about encryption. And I can tell you that officials at the White House have received the letter, we are aware of it, and we appreciate the input and perspective of these organizations. The administration firmly supports the development and robust adoption of strong encryption. The president himself has acknowledged it can be a strong tool for commerce and trade, to safeguard private information and to promote free expression in association. At the same time, we're also understandably concerned about the use of encryption by terrorists and other criminals to conceal and enable crimes and other malicious activity. And the fact is that even though some people misuse this encryption technology, we believe here in the administration that responsibly deployed encryption helps secure private communications in commerce, and that's something worth supporting.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Who covered up the cameras in this room? Because the cameras were covered up or pointed down. And these are cameras owned by news organizations. I'm just wondering, we were all escorted out. It wasn't somebody from our organizations. Somebody cut off our ability to see what was going on in this room by turning the cameras down. Who did that and why?

EARNEST: I was also evacuated alongside with you, John, so I was not in this room.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: These cameras, again, are owned by the news organization.

EARNEST: I understand.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And somebody has gone to every single one of them, even the ones outside, and they were tampered with so we wouldn't be able to see what was going on.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Josh, was the president or his family in any way evacuated?

EARNEST: They were not. This is the only room in the White House complex that was evacuated.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: -- so it wasn't exclusively this room. Who beyond this room or how far outside of this room did the evacuation go?

EARNEST: Peter, I was also evacuated. I left the room at the same time that all of you did.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: So you stayed in the room adjacent to here?

EARNEST: I was not in the room adjacent to here, Peter. I went into my office.

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EARNEST: Let's do this one at a time, OK?

So, go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: To be clear, this room was evacuated. And was the lower pressroom adjacent to us evacuated?

EARNEST: Yes, it's considered part of the press area that the White House press operates, so the staff that works there came into my office while this room was swept.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Was any staff outside of this adjacent room evacuated? What there any senior staff or any other staff within the White House --

[14:50:01] EARNEST: No. It is my -- it is my understanding nobody else was evacuated --

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EARNEST: Just one at a time.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The call came in at 1:53, Josh, according to the Secret Service. The evacuation took place, as you witnessed with us, at 2:14, so more than 20 minutes passed in that time. Is there any reason for any concern in that delay before the evacuation took place?

EARNEST: No. This is a decision made by Secret Service based on information they had received. I don't know how long it took for the information to be transmitted to the Secret Service and for the decision to be made to evacuate the room but, again, the evacuation was conducted to protect the safety of all of us.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And what was the president doing at the time, even if he wasn't evacuated, what was he physically doing?

EARNEST: I'm not sure. He was at the White House but I'm not sure where he was.

Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Was he at the Oval Office?

EARNEST: I don't know exactly where he was. He was on the White House grounds.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: This is a bomb threat, right?

EARNEST: That's my understanding, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Serious enough to move us to the executive office building, why would the president not be moved out of the White House?

EARNEST: Again, Chip, I can't -- these are obviously decisions made by the Secret Service. They did that in the interests of keeping us safe. But I suspect that part of the reason for moving you to the south court auditorium it was a place where you could be inside in the air conditioning. But that's what they're trying to do is make sure they could quickly clear the room, which they did, and allow us to come back here and go about our business.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The president was never in any danger as far we know?

EARNEST: Certainly not that I'm aware of.

Go ahead, Josh.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Josh, do we know if there's any indication this incident was connected to the security incident we saw on Capitol Hill today?

EARNEST: I don't know. You should check with the Secret Service about that.

Go ahead, John.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Josh, you said you were evacuated. You just went to your office?

EARNEST: That's right. I was evacuated from this room like all of you are.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Your office is right down the hall.

EARNEST: It's not far away.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: It's hard to imagine why a bomb threat that would necessitate evacuating this entire room wouldn't affect the rest of this West Wing complex. It's not a very large complex.

EARNEST: It's not a very large complex but, John, I can't account for that.

Go ahead, Julie.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Quickly, can you tell us how it is that the rest of the West Wing could have stayed in their offices while we had to leave? If it had been a bomb, is there fireproofing, bomb proofing, the distance between here and there?

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EARNEST: I don't know all of the security measures that are in place to protect the White House. Even if I did, I'm not sure I'd be in a position to talk about them from here. For a question like that, I'd refer you to the Secret Service.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: You can tell us what they did in here before they gave us the all clear and let us come back?

EARNEST: They swept the room, which typically involves inspection of the room by some experts and I know that they had K-9 units in here as well. But for all of the activity required to clear the room, I refer you to the Secret Service.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Josh, is this your --

(CROSSTALK)

EARNEST: Just one at a time.

Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I want to go back to the question we were asking before we were evacuated.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Could you find out where the president was and whether he was moved?

EARNEST: I know that he was not moved and we'll see if we can get additional information where he happened to be at that time.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Josh, I want to follow on the bomb question about proximity. So you were told to shelter in place, correct, in your office?

EARNEST: I was told to leave the room in the same way you did.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: In your office, were you told to shelter in place?

EARNEST: No, I was not told to shelter in place.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: We are just feet from your office and feet from the Oval Office and also feet from the residence. There's a close proximity. Was anyone else told in the residence maybe to move or to shelter in place while this was going on? It seemed like it was a serious scenario that they had gone in offices, under desks, had dogs walking through, and no one was told to move or shelter in place, except for the press.

EARNEST: April, I'm sharing with you all the information that I have right now, which is that based on a threat that the Secret Service received from another law enforcement organization about the press area at the White House, the press area at the White House was evacuated for the safety of all of us. And the Secret Service using resources that they keep here on the complex was able to quickly search this location and conclude that it was safe. As soon as they did, as soon as they did, we were able to all come back in the room and pick up where we left off. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: But they moved us. We went outside. You said

it was to keep us cool, but I don't think it was. We were out there, you were in your office. We went to Pebble Beach first and then they moved us further down into the next building on the campus, and moved us even further back. It wasn't for coolness. It was because of a fear. So my question is, with the proximity to everyone and everything here, the seat of power just feet away, and they were not moved, but we had to be pushed all the way back, I'm trying -- there's something not jiving and not mixing. It just seems odd.

EARNEST: April, for the questions that you have about decisions made by the Secret Service, that I would encourage you to contact the Secret Service and they can get you a more specific question than I'm able to.

[14:55:04]UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: To break into a briefing, if they had to think about it coming in, because I watched them, they had to think about stopping the briefing because of the severity, no one was moved. It doesn't sound right. I'm sorry.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Did you talk to the president since the evacuation?

EARNEST: No, I did not.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Was he in the West Wing, do you know?

EARNEST: I don't know but we'll see if we can get you precise information. He was here at the White House but I don't know what I was in.

Are we ready to go back to our regularly scheduled programming?

(CROSSTALK)

EARNEST: Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Any more about the nature of the threat, as it related to law enforcement to necessitate a limited evacuation here at the White House? Out of potency or power or whoever it may have been?

EARNEST: No, I'm not. I don't know what information was transmitted in the specific bomb threat other than the briefing room was identified as the location of that, of this purported bomb but --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Not necessarily an agent?

EARNEST: That's what the Secret Service said, it was a threat.

Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Does it concern you that if the bomb was in the building that you were so close to it, potentially, and does it concern you that if the bomb was called in as a threat, that somebody in the press corps might have had on their person that the entire press corps was kept together in a small area well away from the White House. I mean, do either of these scenarios raise questions in your mind?

EARNEST: I have complete confidence in the professionalism of the Secret Service to make judgments about what is necessary to keep all of us safe, and that's what they did this afternoon. For questions why and how the decisions were made and how they were made, you can direct them to the Secret Service.

OK, all right. All right, are we ready to move on to other topics?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Not yet.

EARNEST: Go ahead, Mark.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Josh, you said the president was not moved today. Have there been occasions in the past during his presidency when he's been moved into the PIOC?

EARNEST: I refer you to the Secret Service for any -- answering questions.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you know?

EARNEST: Off the top of my head, no, but it doesn't mean that it didn't occur. I encourage to you check with the Secret Service to confirm that.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: There was no bomb, right, just a threat. They didn't discover something and deactivate it? There was nothing found?

EARNEST: That's correct.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Where members of the president's family at the White House at the time this all took place, the girls or Michelle at the White House?

EARNEST: I don't know the answer to that but we'll check on that for you.

EARNEST: Anybody else?

OK, Julie, thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Just to follow up on what you were saying when we were all evacuated, you were talking about a cabinet meeting a couple weeks ago.

EARNEST: Yes, I was.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I wanted to clarify, was that before or after he had been aware, and you at the White House had been aware of the breach of four million people's identifying information --

(CROSSTALK) EARNEST: I don't know the precise sequence of those events but I will

tell you that it is not unusual for the president to spend time at a cabinet meeting talking to the leaders of the government about the importance of cyber security, but I do know that as recently as the most recent cabinet meeting, which occurred two or three weeks ago, that this was an agenda item and the president made clear to members of his cabinet that how seriously he takes cyber security and how important it is for the leaders of those organizations to prioritize the effort to upgrade our cyber defenses, put in place software that --

BALDWIN: Let's pull out of this. Really what we wanted to hear and -- I mean, can you blame those journalists, question after question after question about why were they told to evacuate the press briefing room, knowing especially as we just learned, that the president of the United States was home, was in the White House, was not moved, despite this bomb threat that was called in. Even Josh Earnest, the press secretary, there speaking, his office feet from the briefing room, he just went back to his office. So a lot of questions, a lot of the White House press corps pressing Josh as well, how would that be saved if you were taking this threat seriously, sweeping the briefing room, given the fact that no one else had to move.

Joe Johns is with me. Joe Johns has covered Washington for years and years.

I don't know if you've ever seen anything quite like this, Joe, it does beg the question why was the White House press corps asked to leave but the surrounding offices, and including the president -- they're not far from the Oval Office, from the residence -- they didn't move.

JOHNS: Right, and obviously, I can't speak for the Secret Service and the threat that they determined at the time --

BALDWIN: Right.

JOHNS: -- but I can tell you we've seen quite a bit of that around Washington. We saw some of it on Capitol Hill today where there was a report of a suspicious package, later of a bomb threat at the Dirksen building. And then it was interesting because the sense was that a lot of people were being evacuated, including from the hearing room of the Homeland Security Committee. And there were other people still inside the Dirksen building, down on the lower floors, who appeared to be going about their business as usual.