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U.S. Delivers Blow To Al Qaeda; Former NAACP Leader Speaks Out; Manhunt. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired June 16, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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


[15:00:00] CLINT BRODEN, ATTORNEY FOR MATT CLENDENNEN: And it can be destroyed in minutes.

So, we want some acknowledgement of wrongdoing, first of all. The police are still saying that they had probable cause to arrest 177 people, which is obviously false. But then we will be asking for compensation from the individual defendants, along with the city of Waco and McLennan County.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: It was a mass arrest. Anyone I talked to said they have never seen so many mug shots in one single day.

Matt Clendennen, let's stay in contact with you and see where this thing goes.

Clint Broden, thank you to you as well.

BRODEN: Thank you, Brooke.

MATT CLENDENNEN: Thank you very much.

And we continue on, hour two. I'm Brooke Baldwin. This is CNN.

And as two killers continue to evade the more than 800 police hunting them, we are now hearing from a source close to this investigation that the fugitive's trail is, in a word, cold. And as hope of finding Richard Matt and David Sweat appears to fade, our sources are also revealing more about the plot this pair of killers concocted in their cells, including the possibility that they may have planned to murder the husband of the prison tailor, this woman here who helped allegedly them escape.

Her lawyer telling CNN that accusation in no uncertain terms is false.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Is there anything you can tell us why Lyle has an attorney and what is going there?

STEPHEN JOHNSTON, ATTORNEY FOR JOYCE MITCHELL: As soon as I realized he had a lawyer, we sort of stopped talking, pretty much.

QUESTION: Did you know anything about this alleged plan to possibly harm Lyle?

JOHNSTON: I don't know very much about it, other than I believe it's specious, a specious argument. So, that's about all I can tell you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: CNN's Alexandra Field is in West Plattsburgh, New York.

And, Alexandra, we know Joyce Mitchell is behind bars. She's been there a couple of days, right? She had been cooperating. She had been talking. And now she's under direct one-on-one supervision. But she just received a visitor today. Who was that?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: She did. It was her first visitor and it was her husband, Lyle.

The sheriff at the Clinton County Jail says that Lyle was there first thing this morning. He spent about an hour visiting with her. This was a noncontact visit, which means that they spoke to each other over the phone and with a glass partition separating them.

This was not a monitored phone call, Brooke. It was described to me as a private phone call, but the observations made by the sheriff's department was that she appeared to feel comforted from seeing Lyle and that he appeared to be supportive.

We do know that she's being closely monitored in her cell in Clinton County Correctional. She is being watched around the clock. Her moves are being recorded. The sheriff has said that she appears to be calm and maintaining her composure.

Her attorney, who spoke out a short while ago, however, says that she is remorseful, that she's been tearful in his presence. And, Brooke, while we know that she had spoken very openly and freely to investigators throughout the first stages of this investigation, her attorney says that she has not spoken to investigators since he took on the case.

BALDWIN: OK. Moving off of her and back to this whole hunt for these two escaped killers, again, the word we're hearing is cold. The trail has gone cold.

What kind of activity, what kind of police presence is still there in Upstate New York?

FIELD: Look, the presence hasn't dissipated. You can see behind me that there is still a road closure here at 374. We're still seeing a lot of law enforcement officers in the area.

But the reality of the situation is that there is no longer the confidence that they had a week ago that they were closing in on these guys. It was a week ago where they thought that they found some tracks belonging to the suspects, a food wrapper that the bloodhounds had hit on a scent.

At this point, five, six days later, there has been no clear sign, according to anyone in the investigation, that they remained here, so certainly those who are involved in the search are very much entertaining the idea that they could be here, but really they could be anywhere, again, just no clear recent sign that they are here, but law enforcement feeling that it is important to maintain their presence out here, to be in the community and to follow up on some of the hundreds and hundreds of leads that continue to pour in.

BALDWIN: Alexandra Field, thank you very much.

Joining me, someone who knows definitely what it takes to track down fugitives. He is Lenny DePaul, former commander U.S. Marshals Service Regional Fugitive Task Force for New York and New Jersey. He's back with me.

Did you think -- we were sitting here, what was it, Friday?

(CROSSTALK)

LENNY DEPAUL, FORMER COMMANDER, NEW YORK/NEW JERSEY REGIONAL FUGITIVE FORCE: Yes, a few days back.

BALDWIN: A few days back. I was checking my e-mail like a crazy person over the weekend. I thought for sure it would have happened. We're now nearly day 11, trail is cold. What does that even mean, by the way? How do they know that?

DEPAUL: I believe we -- well, there's a few reasons they would know that.

Day 11, they are certainly prioritizing these leads that are coming in. There's an intensive manhunt going on in Upstate New York. There's cabins being searched that they are still locked from last summer.

So, best-case scenario, these guys are there. There's nothing. There's no robberies. There's no break-ins. There's no hostages. There's no carjacking. It's zero.

BALDWIN: Nothing, nothing apparently since the bloodhound scent from days ago.

DEPAUL: Right. And we spoke about a plan B.

[15:05:02]

The dogs might have had a bad day. Is Joyce Mitchell not only a plan B, but the red herring? Again, did they use her? Did they feed her everything?

BALDWIN: That's my question. We had talked so much about Joyce Mitchell and again now hearing about this plot potentially to off her husband, how much she was aware of that, how much he might have aware of that.

Would these two who we have been calling dumb thus far, but I'm not so sure how dumb they are right now, have used her as a pawn knowingly that she could be the decoy and they'd be going the other way?

DEPAUL: Certainly can't rule that out. And I know that's going through law enforcement's heads as we speak.

BALDWIN: Wow.

DEPAUL: It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. U.S. Marshals have cast a wider net and they have been for a week now. There are others being looked at, talked to, surveilled, whatever, from Canada to Mexico. So, we're certainly doing our part.

But, yes, what does she -- was she a pawn? Was she force-fed or spoon-fed everything, knowing law enforcement would look at her? She is a prime target. She has a prior complaint against her with David Sweat. As soon as they escape, they're going to be on law -- she's going to be on law enforcement radar. They knew that. Let's go to her, see -- and they -- they -- and she probably didn't even realize that.

Killing the husband, all these allegations that are coming out, they told her whatever it took to keep her close to the vest, where she didn't go to law enforcement prior to their escape. They used her. There's somebody else involved. Somebody picked these guys up.

BALDWIN: Who would that somebody be?

DEPAUL: That's the million-dollar question, Brooke.

(CROSSTALK)

DEPAUL: I would come out of retirement.

BALDWIN: But that person would have to be on the outside somewhere.

DEPAUL: Somewhere, somehow. I mean, these guys -- again, you guys are doing a fabulous job. Their face is everywhere. They're tattooed from head to toe. Where are they going to go?

I spoke to a good friend of mine, Mark (ph), in Upstate New York. You know what he said to me? He goes, these guys are everywhere. Every time I turn around, somebody is talking about them. They are laying low. They are dark. They are going to mess up. They will for the dust to settle, the smoke to clear. They will surface. Somebody will say something and we will be waiting for them.

BALDWIN: Let's play out a hypothetical of the whole Mexico idea. And I only throw that out there because we heard Governor Andrew Cuomo throwing it out there as a possibility. And I don't even know how serious he was or not.

He was like, listen, they could even be in Mexico. One of these two has ties to Mexico, tats, the Mexican connection. How would they even physically get to Mexico? They have been in prison. They have no ideas -- no I.D.s, no form of transportation. Maybe they did.

DEPAUL: Well, there's a lot of maybes. And, again, a lot -- here we go with the what-ifs again.

Mexico was -- apparently, he was there. We extradited him in '07. He committed another murder down there. He does have connections. I think -- I don't think they went south. I think they went north.

BALDWIN: Really?

DEPAUL: And, again, that's my gut. I'm hoping they are sitting in a cabin miserable, hungry, and --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Kind of chilling out.

DEPAUL: But I think we have got a better chance of it snowing tomorrow. I don't believe that's the case, but certainly with the state troopers, obviously, they have the lead, and the U.S. Marshals Service is doing their thing. We will find them.

BALDWIN: What else? What else are they doing? What are the other questions we should be asking?

DEPAUL: Other than the leads that have come in, and the public needs to remain vigilant. They have got to be aware that it's a good possibility now that they are not in Upstate New York sitting in the woods or sitting in a cabin at that lake.

You see these people in Davenport, Iowa, or somebody that looks like them, they may be together, they may be split up, who knows, but call law enforcement. Let them -- let the professionals do their job. And, again, we all want these guys arrested yesterday, but it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. So --

BALDWIN: Lenny DePaul, thank you so much.

DEPAUL: Good to see you. Thank you.

BALDWIN: I really appreciate it.

Coming up next here on CNN, the NAACP leader breaks her silence today after resigning over questions about her race. Hear how she responds to being white, about her childhood and whether she deceived everyone. We will discuss that.

Also, did al Qaeda just suffer its biggest blow since the death of Osama bin Laden? Hear what the United States did and how the terror group is reacting to all of this.

Plus, off-the-field foul play. Have you heard this story? Why the FBI is now launching an investigation into the alleged dirty play of one of Major League's baseball teams here. Stay right with me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:13:21]

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

One day now after she stepped down, the former NAACP chapter president accused of faking her race is opening up. But Rachel Dolezal says did not apologize for pretending to be black, as her white parents say. Dolezal spoke with NBC's Matt Lauer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATT LAUER, CO-HOST, "THE TODAY SHOW": You're an African-American woman?

RACHEL DOLEZAL, FORMER PRESIDENT, SPOKANE NAACP: I identify as black.

LAUER: You identify as black. Let me put a picture up of you in your early 20s, though. And when you see this picture, is that an African- American woman or is that a Caucasian woman?

RACHEL DOLEZAL: That's not in my early 20s, but --

LAUER: That's a little younger, I guess, yes?

(CROSSTALK)

RACHEL DOLEZAL: -- 16 in that picture.

LAUER: Is she a Caucasian woman or an African-American woman?

RACHEL DOLEZAL: I would say that, visibly, she would be identified as white by people who see her.

LAUER: But, at the time, were you identifying yourself as African- American?

RACHEL DOLEZAL: In that picture during that time, no.

LAUER: When did it start?

RACHEL DOLEZAL: I would say about five years old.

LAUER: You began identifying yourself as African-American?

RACHEL DOLEZAL: I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon, instead of the peach crayon, and the black -- you know, black color hair, and, you know, yes, that was -- that was how I was portraying myself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: She tells that story about the crayons, but when you hear from her parents, they told CNN after that interview that what her their daughter said isn't the truth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUTHANNE DOLEZAL, MOTHER OF RACHEL DOLEZAL: She did not ever refer to herself or draw pictures or anything that indicated that she thought of herself as black. It was disturbing, because the false statements continue. And as much as we're concerned with Rachel's identity issues, we are also concerned with her integrity issues.

(END VIDEO CLIP) [15:15:17]

BALDWIN: With me now, professor Camille Gear Rich of USC Gould School of Law and Cornell Brooks, the president and CEO of the NAACP.

A pleasure to have both of you on. Welcome.

CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS, PRESIDENT & CEO, NAACP: It's good to be with you.

CAMILLE GEAR RICH, PROFESSOR, USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW: Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: Cornell, let me just begin with you. You heard her with Matt Lauer. She says she identifies as a black woman. Do you think that she has disrespected African-Americans?

BROOKS: Well, there are many people across this country who identify with the African-American experience, music, culture, religion, art.

But there's a difference between identifying with the experience and using that experience or misappropriating or malappropriating that experience. And there's a difference between talking about the experience, partaking that experience, and using that experience in ways that are inauthentic.

So what I want to focus on here is, in doing work with the NAACP, what we have endeavored to do is create an America in which all Americans can partake of our ethnicities, our cultures, our collective American experience as Americans, embracing all of America in its racial diversity.

But that must be done authentically. That's critically important here. And it is a measure and a mark of leadership in terms of having integrity and authenticity. There are lots of unanswered questions with respect to her.

She's served well at the branch level. But, at the end of the day, the work of the NAACP is creating a racism-free America. That's what is most important here.

BALDWIN: OK.

So I'm not getting a yes or no from you. I hear that. But let me take it -- let me ask you this way. With the NAACP, she has been praised for her work as that chapter president in Spokane, Washington. So, do you -- would you be OK, would you support her if she wanted to play a role with the NAACP there?

BROOKS: Well, let's be clear here. The NAACP has had, from its very founding --

BALDWIN: Absolutely, not just African-Americans.

BROOKS: -- Americans of all -- not -- that's precisely it. And there are branch presidents who are white. So, that's not the

issue. And it's not the issue in terms of whether or not she can play a role. Anyone can play a role as a leader, as long as they adhere to our principles and they're committed to creating the kind of America that we are endeavoring to do so.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: So, if she had been open about it, if she had not -- if she had then been misrepresented herself and been the blonde, white- skinned woman that we have seen in these early pictures of her, do you think she would have risen to chapter president?

BROOKS: Absolutely.

When you look at, say, for example, one of our national presidents who had white skin, blue eyes and red hair, Walter White, he rose to become national executive director or president of the NAACP. It's not the color of your skin. Literally, it's the content of your character and the character of your leadership that makes the difference here, not the color of your skin.

So, we don't need to be distracted by that. The issue here is authenticity. It's integrity. It's people being in a position to believe what you say, because, at the end of the day, when you represent the NAACP, you're taking on some of the most difficult challenges in this country, and people have to be able to rely on what we say and our advocacy. And so that's the issue here, integrity, not skin color.

BALDWIN: OK.

Professor, I promise I'm coming to you. But let me play just a little bit more sound and we will talk on the other side of this.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: This is Rachel Dolezal. This is when she was explaining how she talked about race with her two sons.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL DOLEZAL: I actually was talking to one of my sons yesterday. And he said, mom, racially, you're human, and, culturally, you're black. And, you know, so we have had these conversations over the years. I do know that they support the way that I identify and they support me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So, Camille, you wrote this great opinion piece for CNN.com and you wrote -- toward the end, you said, "In my view, hate the sin, but love the sinner."

Explain what you meant by that. RICH: Well, I think this is a profoundly sad case, because Rachel

Dolezal has done, by all accounts, impressive, positive work for the community in which she worked. And this scandal is tending -- has tended to overshadow that work and overshadow the experience that she was trying to provide to the people she was assisting in that community.

So, while I do not sanction her decision to affirmatively misrepresent her race, to affirmatively, I do think that's a question of her integrity. At the same time, I think that she was trying to live a life that seemed authentic to her.

[15:20:11]

As a member of a multiracial family, raising two black sons, I think she felt probably profoundly connected to the African-American experience. And I can see how over time, she would want that to connection to be publicly affirmed. She would want the understanding to predominate that she was a member of this collective, not a white person standing on the margins, but a person that really was connected to the African-American experience and cared deeply about black people.

So I stress again, should she have lied? No, absolutely not. But I think a lot of people --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: No, just to your point --

(CROSSTALK)

RICH: A lot of people operate in society based on misrecognition. So, they kind of hope that people will see them as a particular racial group, even if they are not a member of that racial group.

And they do that quite often, when they feel a particular connection to a minority community.

BALDWIN: But isn't the lying part of it because -- and you write in the piece, she never admitted she lied. She was sitting with Matt Lauer and she never admitted that, yes, she had been deceitful. So, despite that, do you still admire her choice?

RICH: I don't think she thinks she lied.

I think she thinks that racial identity is something that you actualize in the way that you live, in the commitments that you have, in the family commitments that you have, and that she did things that established herself as a member of the black community.

So I think that's why she is resisting characterizing what she did as lying. In the research that I do, I look a lot at how people answer racial identification forms. You have these various moments where you are required to answer them, in elementary school, in high school. When you go to work at a place of employment, you're asked again and

again and again to identify yourself racially. And people answer those questions quite differently, both based on how the form looks, the experiences that they have had, the other people that are in the room and all sorts of things.

So this kind of fluidity, although she's sort of become the poster child for this particular issue, this issue is far more common than people acknowledge.

BALDWIN: And I'm with you. And you have read and written thousands more pages on this than I ever did.

But I'm wondering, to that point, here she was, she went to Howard, the Howard University, as a graduate student, though she at the same time sued them, saying she was discriminated against because she was white, yet flash forward some years, and she alleges being the victim of a hate crime because I suppose, in her opinion, her skin tone was a little darker. How do you reconcile that?

RICH: For me, this is not at all an inconsistent narrative.

So, if she was still at Howard and still continued to identify as a white person and was doing all sorts of projects on black aesthetics and black art and felt that she was being marginalized because she of her whiteness, that she couldn't participate in certain conversations, that her art wasn't being taken seriously, you could see how later on she would be incentivized to hope for, right, misrecognition, and then eventually -- and, again, I don't condone this -- but eventually sliding into affirmatively representing herself as black.

So, the discrimination experience she had, which, by most accounts, does not seem to be substantiated, the discrimination experience that she had may have been another thing that sort of pushed her over the line into this regrettable behavior.

BALDWIN: This is getting deep. This is fascinating. I could do a whole hour on this.

Camille Gear Rich, I really appreciate you so much and your perspective.

And, Cornell Brooks, thank so much as well.

RICH: Thank you.

BROOKS: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, a major development today at a terror battlefield, al Qaeda's second in command targeted and killed by a U.S. drone. My next guest explains why this is the biggest blow to the terror group since the death of Osama bin Laden.

Plus, breaking news, Tropical Storm Bill making landfall in the Texas Gulf Coast and bringing along with it a major flooding threat. We will take you into the storm straight ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:28:18]

BALDWIN: Osama bin Laden's one-time personal secretary, al Qaeda's number two man, has just been killed by an American drone strike, leader of one the most dangerous branches of the jihadist network, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, this man's primary task, plotting attacks against the West for years.

Joining me now, Paul Cruickshank, CNN terrorism analyst and co-author of "Agent Storm: My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA," and Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, CNN military analyst and retired Army, former commanding general Europe and Seventh Army.

Gentlemen, welcome to both of you.

Paul Cruickshank, first up here, is this the biggest blow to al Qaeda since bin Laden's death?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Brooke, I don't think there's any doubt about that. This is a very major blow against the broader al Qaeda network.

Nasser al-Wuhayshi was the number two of al Qaeda globally. Many within the global jihadi government thought he was going to be the long-term successor of Osama bin Laden. He was very close to bin Laden before 9/11. This was somebody with a great deal of charisma, a bin Laden type of charisma who was beloved of his fighters.

And he was al Qaeda's most valuable asset in the showdown with ISIS in the global jihadi community, the showdown, the contest for recruits and influence. So, now he's gone. This will hurt al Qaeda. No doubt about it.

BALDWIN: And, General, this is the second major terror operation we have heard about in two days, right? One was a manned airstrike. This one was the drone strike.

How do they determine which to use?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Depending on the availability, Brooke.

First of all, let me agree with Paul completely on this one. This was a huge hit. And this guy was known as Osama bin Laden's shadow. He had been with him since the late '90s in Afghanistan.