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Obama Defends Iran Deal; Planned Parenthood Controversy; Crews Find Wreckage of Plane Crash. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired July 16, 2015 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[10:29:46] MAJOR GARRETT, CBS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content with all the fanfare around this deal to leave the conscience of this nation, the strength of this nation unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I got to give you credit, Major, for how you craft those questions. The notion that I am content as I celebrate with American citizens languishing in Iranian jails -- Major, that's nonsense. And you should know better.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Garrett defended his line of questioning during an interview this morning on "CBS This Morning".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE, CBS NEWS ANCHOR: Major, you're a good reporter and all of us have asked questions that we wish we had perhaps asked differently. Second thoughts?
GARRETT: No. Look, the position I'm in, I ask the question I ask and I can't take it back. The President believed I was suggesting he was content with the Americans' captivity. That wasn't the basis of my question. It wasn't my intent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: So let's talk about this.
Democratic strategist Robert Zimmerman is here along with Tara Setmayer, former communications director for Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher. Thanks to both of you for being with me this morning.
ROBERT ZIMMERMAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Good to be with you.
COSTELLO: So Tara, are we all making too much of this?
TARA SETMAYER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think we're making too much of the fact that Major Garrett actually had the temerity to ask the President a pointed question. You know, the President needs to get over it -- OK. Too bad that he got upset that Major Garrett pointed out the fact
that we have four Americans languishing in Iran. The President was running around spiking the football about this is a great deal, he's on offense. But yet he never mentioned the fact that they tried to get these Americans out or the fact that the Americans -- they weren't even on the table. He went in and sidestepped the question, said, well --
(CROSSTALK)
COSTELLO: Actually he did answer that question during this press conference.
SETMAYER: Not really. He was really so upset --
ZIMMERMAN: It's an interesting point to observe --
SETMAYER: -- he was really so upset about the fact that he was so concerned and not content that he would have addressed those families. If he had taken that moment and looked in the camera and said, you know, we're doing everything we can. We're going to get you Americans out --
You have a problem with that? The President standing up and actually being presidential talking about getting our Americans out of a country that hates us.
ZIMMERMAN: All of a sudden, Tara, you're all over there calling it the lame stream media.
SETMAYER: I never called them the lame stream media.
ZIMMERMAN: Oh please.
SETMAYER: Those words have never come out of my mouth.
ZIMMERMAN: All of a sudden you now respect the media. Here's the point.
Major Garrett didn't ask a question. He made an accusation -- Carol. That's the point. He admitted he wanted to be provocative. He wanted to strike a nerve. And I think very frankly the President showed a profile in presidential restraint by using the word "nonsense" which was not the first thing on his mind. I'm sure of that.
(CROSSTALK)
ZIMMERMAN: The point I'm taking to you is that, look, we certainly know, these four individuals are being held in Iran are the constant focus of negotiations that are going on. To imply that somehow the President doesn't care is a disrespectful comment and is also grossly inaccurate.
COSTELLO: Major Garrett also said this morning on CBS that he felt guilty about not devoting more time to covering these four Americans that are being held hostage in Iran and that's really why he phrased the question that way.
ZIMMERMAN: Then he should see a therapist but not use the Presidential press conference to make himself the story. And by the way, it's not the first time we've seen reporters try to make themselves news during a presidential press conference and whether it's a Republican or a Democratic president --
COSTELLO: Back in the day it was Sam Donaldson, right?
ZIMMERMAN: Exactly. And very frankly, it was wrong then and it's wrong now.
COSTELLO: Really? I enjoyed Sam Donaldson.
ZIMMERMAN: You know something -- that's not the point. He's a great journalist but a presidential press conference is designed to ask questions and hopefully prompt answers not to make themselves -- not to make the reporters themselves the stories.
SETMAYER: No. The only reason why Major Garrett became the story was because of the President's petulant response back to him. And also in that response he said that they couldn't put those Americans, the hostages, on the table in those negotiations because then it would have opened the door for other concessions. That's a bunch of BS.
COSTELLO: No, no. That's not what he said.
ZIMMERMAN: That's not what he said Tara.
COSTELLO: That's not what he said.
(CROSSTALK)
SETMAYER: He said if they had made that a condition, that would have opened up the door for the Iranians to put forth more concessions. But they put more concessions -- let me finish my sentence Robert.
ZIMMERMAN: Go ahead.
SETMAYER: They put forth concessions like removing sanctions -- economic sanctions on the Quds commander. That is the commander of the secret force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that have blood on their hands killing thousands of Americans, supporting terrorism in Iraq.
ZIMMERMAN: You know something. There should be some topics --
SETMAYER: We gave Iran that but we couldn't get our Americans back.
ZIMMERMAN: There should be some topics that should be above partisan discussion and partisan discourse. We all are united in terms of bringing home those four Americans being held on trumped-up charges -- one of the four is missing actually. It's a tragedy and we're all focused on it. But to try to make this a partisan debate is just wrong. It's wrong.
SETMAYER: It's not. It's a bipartisan debate.
ZIMMERMAN: And very frankly, you have seen our country united in this front. And we'll negotiate --
COSTELLO: I wouldn't call Major Garrett partisan though.
ZIMMERMAN: I wouldn't call him partisan but I think the discourse around these individuals is partisan. The bigger point is we know there's a lot of negotiations going on, a lot going on behind the scenes. Obviously it's not something -- we shouldn't be discussing these type of sensitive negotiations in public.
SETMAYER: There's nothing bipartisan about what Major Garrett asked. There's nothing bipartisan about the fact that we have a pastor, a marine, a "Washington Post" journalist, and a former FBI agent languishing in Iran right now and this United States of America has left them there.
ZIMMERMAN: That's incorrect -- Tara.
[10:35:04] SETMAYER: We traded five Taliban terrorists for a deserter and heralded that as if that were OK. The Obama administration is OK with that. But they could not do that with a country like Iran who chants "death to America" to us. We gave our -- gave everything away. We have no leverage now.
COSTELLO: OK, Robert -- last word.
ZIMMERMAN: Very simply -- Tara, relax. The reality --
SETMAYER: I'm not going to relax. I'm very upset.
Let me tell you something -- Robert.
ZIMMERMAN: Excuse me, Tara -- may I finish my point.
SETMAYER: Have you sat across from an innocent man in prison or looked in the eyes of their children? I have. I have done that. This is very personal for me to see that our Americans are sitting over there.
ZIMMERMAN: And Tara -- we all feel deeply about it.
SETMAYER: Do you?
ZIMMERMAN: But the difference is we don't use it as a partisan game.
SETMAYER: Nobody is. It's a bipartisan issue.
ZIMMERMAN: We're trying to make the point that we have to work together as a country to solve this. And very frankly our president and our entire government whether it's a Republican or Democratic president are totally committed to seeing individuals freed from these kinds of restraints.
SETMAYER: Then why aren't they free now?
They should be free now and Brad Sherman, a Democrat; Bob Menendez Democrat -- these are all people who are critical of what the President has done with Iran.
ZIMMERMAN: You don't negotiate freedom through sound bites or through tweets -- Tara.
SETMAYER: No, that's right, you don't.
ZIMMERMAN: You negotiate freedom through very high level --
SETMAYER: No, that's right. You negotiate, you're being tough --
COSTELLO: I'm going to have to leave it there. I'm going to have to leave it there.
SETMAYER: -- you look your enemies in the eyes and tell them that the power of the United States is behind you.
COSTELLO: I'm totally awake now.
ZIMMERMAN: I'm totally awake too.
COSTELLO: Robert and Tara -- thank you so much.
ZIMMERMAN: Good to be with you, folks.
COSTELLO: It's nice to have you both here.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM -- a secretly recorded conversation has some calling for an investigation into Planned Parenthood, but is there more to this video than meets the eye?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:40:35] COSTELLO: Checking some top stories for you at 40 minutes past the hour. New details coming out on how many Americans are affiliating themselves with various extremist groups to fight or support the conflict in Syria. More than 250 Americans have traveled overseas to Syria -- that's up from 180 in the last national intelligence assessment. The report also finds more than 20 people from the U.S. are believed to have died fighting for ISIS in Syria.
President Obama heading to where no sitting president has gone before -- prison. He's visiting the El Reno Federal Prison today in Oklahoma City talking with inmates and law enforcement officials as he continues to push for major criminal justice reforms. It comes just after the President commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders.
Protesters violently clashing with police in Greece. This after the parliament voted to accept a Eurozone bailout package. Painful new austerity measures mean more hardships ahead for the Greek people including severe pension cuts and tax hikes.
An undercover video gone viral shows a top official at Planned Parenthood discussing aborted fetuses over a glass of wine. The video was shot last year by an anti-abortion group known as the Center for Medical Progress and led by a man named David Daleiden. Daleiden is a long time anti-abortion activist who has been accused before of deceptively editing video.
The group claims it documents Planned Parenthood selling fetal organs for a profit. Planned Parenthood calls the claims outrageous and flat out untrue. Already some Republican lawmakers though are calling for an investigation.
Athena Jones has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So I say, OK, what are you looking to supply today?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're very good at getting heart, lungs, liver.
ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: An abortion provider discussing how to collect body parts from aborted fetuses over lunch at a California restaurant.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A lot of people want intact hearts these days. They're looking for specific nodes.
JONES: The secret recording made by anti-abortion activists from the Center for Medical Progress is the latest salvo in the decade-long debate over abortion rights.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every provider has had patients who want to donate their tissue and they absolutely want to accommodate them. They just want to do it in a way that's not perceived as "this clinic selling tissue. This clinic is making money off of this."
JONES: The group posted two versions of the video they say was shot last year: a heavily edited clip just under nine minutes long, and a so-called full version that's nearly three hours long. CNN can't verify the longer version is the complete, unedited video.
The Center for Medical Progress says the video proves Planned Parenthood sells fetal organs and tissues, a practice that's against the law. They point to this online form to order tissue by organ and age of the fetus. And this exchange between the two actors posing as representatives of a biologics company and Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's director of medical services.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, I could throw a number out. I would say it's probably anywhere from $30 to $100 depending on the (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: $30 to $100 -- that's per specimen that we're talking about -- right?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
JONES: Planned Parenthood calls the group's claims flat out untrue. "Our medical practices and guidelines in this are clear. And we do this important work just like other high quality health care providers with full appropriate consent from patients under the highest ethical and legal standards and with no financial benefit for the patient or Planned Parenthood."
And those dollar amounts being discussed? The organization says that was about the cost to transport donated tissue -- standard practice. But where is the line? Medical ethicists say exchanges like this one raise questions. Suggesting doctors adjust their procedures to ensure the desired tissues are collected.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'd say a lot of other people want liver, and for that reason most providers use ultrasound guidance so they know where they're putting their forceps.
JONES: We asked CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen about it.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So what ethicists said to me is look if they were giving women abortions and they changed their technique, they changed their practices in order to get the best quality tissue after the abortion -- that's problematic.
[10:45:04] JONES: Legal or not, the video may be hard to watch.
COHEN: To hear a doctor talking about this in between bites of salad and sips of wine will seem like she was sort of matter of fact to some people. Other people might find it disturbing.
JONES: And it's prompting a backlash from Republicans. House Speaker John Boehner calling for an investigation. A call echoed by others.
REP. CHRIS SMITH (R), NEW JERSEY: Congress must and it will investigate and I believe we will put an end to these horrific practices.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: That's Athena Jones reporting.
It is important to note that in the longer version of the video we saw, the Planned Parenthood doctor explicitly said they are not looking to make money on organs.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM, friends of the sole survivor of a fiery plane crash are speaking out about her ordeal. CNN's Sara Sidner is following this story from Washington.
SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Carol -- you know, she has new details that they're sharing with us about where the survivor was and also new details about what that crash site looked like when authorities finally found it. We'll have that coming up after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:50:24] COSTELLO: Crews have found the smoldering wreckage of a small plane that went down in the Washington wilderness last night. The sole survivor of that crash, 16-year-old Autumn Veatch is being called a hero after trekking two days until somebody found her.
Now, friends of Autumn are speaking out about her ordeal. CNN's Sara Sidner talked with some of them. Good morning.
SIDNER: Good morning, Carol. Yes, I mean they tell a really interesting story, and a couple of new details now. They told us where she was sitting, she was sitting in the back behind her step grandparents, the Bowmans. She had also never been on a small aircraft before. This was her first trip with her step grandparents. And she had only flown one other time before on a commercial flight.
So a harrowing, harrowing situation for her when this plane started going down. They said she only was able to see clouds and then trees and then the plane crashed. And it is an incredible story and even more incredible now that we've been able to see the crash site and what that looked like and what the plane looked like as well once authorities found that site. They said that the plane was still smoldering when they found it and that they were able to find two bodies.
Now, as far as how Autumn Veatch is doing, her friends talked a little bit about she is trying to recover. She's got burns and bruises, but they say she's doing well. Here is her friend Sara to tell you a little bit more about how she's being able to recover.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARA EXPERANCE, FRIEND OF AUTUMN VEATCH: She had the will to live. She wanted to. She talks about that, and she had some other little details and thoughts but for the most part it's just wanting to survive and make it out. She's doing really well, especially in consideration of everything she's been through, she's doing phenomenal.
We were able to help her dress her wounds last night and check everything over, and everything is looking really well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: So her friends Sara and Chelsea have been talking a lot for her. We do expect to hear from Autumn. She does want to share her story and that's something that her friends did tell us. She wants to tell people about what happened but she also wants to talk about her step grandparents. She had just been getting really close to them.
On this particular trip, a very tragic event, she actually tried to save them. That's how she burned her hand. Tried to pull them out of that burning wreckage -- Carol.
COSTELLO: All right. Sara Sidner reporting live from Washington state. Thanks so much.
Checking on some other top stories at 52 minutes past the hour.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is set to testify before the Senate Banking Committee today. It comes after a particularly tense questioning by House Republicans yesterday. That's when Yellen said the fed still plans to begin raising interest rates this year. Yellen would not give a time line for the plan, however.
The Hew Horizon spacecraft is giving us a closer look at Pluto than ever before. And new pictures show that the dwarf planet has mountains -- ice mountains that are 11,000 feet tall. It's incredible. That's about the same height a Mt. Hood in Oregon. Scientists call the discovery mind blowing.
Check out more of these pictures as we head to break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:57:39] COSTELLO: It was touted as bigger than Black Friday but did Amazon's Prime Day measure up? According to Amazon it did. It says once customers were on the site they placed orders faster than any other day. Shoppers however disagree, flooding social media with tweets like these.
"Prime day is like when grandma says help yourself to the candy jar, but it has nothing but raisins and sugar-free saltwater taffy." And this tweet, "Turns out Prime Day was better than expected. I thought I would waste hundreds but ended up spending nothing at all."
Still, Amazon certainly not hurting. Shares of the company are up 50 percent this year.
It's not every day that a highway traffic cam picks up air traffic coming in for an emergency landing in the westbound lane of a roadway near the Jersey Shore.
CNN's Jeanne Moos talked to the pilot.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know when you're driving down the highway and you see a plane landing in your rear-view mirror -- ok, it's not exactly the miracle on the Hudson.
This was sort of the miracle on Route 72, huh?
MICHAEL BARBADO, PILOT: I wouldn't call it a miracle.
MOOS: That's pilot Michael Barbado whose excellent emergency landing in traffic was captured by a traffic cam in Stafford, New Jersey. This skydiving plane carrying the pilot, two instructors, and two first-time jumpers lost its only engine. Did you consider jumping? Because you all had parachutes on,
correct?
BARBADO: Yes. There was no chance that I was going to be jumping out of that airplane because once you leave that airplane, you have no control over where it goes.
MOOS: Besides an altitude of 4,000 feet is low for jumping. The pilot came in at almost 100 miles an hour, touched down on the pavement and immediately steered over to the median to avoid hitting cars. A motorist shot the skydivers leaping and hugging in relief. The only injury, a cut on an instructor's arm from the plane's wings hitting road signs.
TADAS SIMONIS, SKYDIVING INSTRUCTOR: But the landing itself was actually soft. Just like landing back at the airport.
MOOS: They don't give you a ticket do they?
BARBADO: No. No and I said sorry about the road signs.
MOOS: like the one crushed under the plane reading keep off the median. Talk about plain English. The pilot wants that as a souvenir.
Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: Wow. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.
"AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan starts now.
[11:00:06] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Breaking news: the suspect in the Charleston church massacre in court. We're about to get our first images of what happened inside.
And -
