Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

North Carolina Police Officer on Trial; ISIS Sex Trade; Presidential Candidates in Iowa. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 14, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:01]

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: That will be looked at in the coming weeks.

This is very controversial. One of President Obama's promises from the start when he took office in his first term was that he wanted to shut down the facility at Guantanamo Bay. Congress has put a lot of roadblocks in the way. They have refused any money for any transfer, many members of Congress very concerned about it.

But now the Pentagon and the White House working on a report to Congress, a plan, if you will, on how they propose to shut Gitmo down and transfer about half of the detainees overseas to other countries for monitoring and the other half of the 116 who are considered still to be very dangerous and to remain in U.S. custody, how to transfer them to the United States. And the first step is to find some sort of facility where they can assure people these people will remain locked up -- Randi.

RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, certainly a big job ahead related to this.

Barbara Starr, thank you very much.

Hillary Clinton preparing for a possible run-in with Donald Trump at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Fried butter cars and meat on sticks provide the backdrop, as the current front-runners join other candidates who are all hoping to win over the undecided caucus-goers in the Hawkeye State.

And right now, Clinton is facing more rumors about yet another possible challenge. Could Al Gore be the next wild card? Rumors are flying today that he's considering a run, although his camp is throwing some lukewarm water on that whole idea.

Meantime, Jeb Bush's biggest battle in Iowa seems to be with his own words right now, not ruling out torture tactics and still fumbling over what to say about his brother's war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Had we not invaded Iraq in the first place, we wouldn't be dealing with this ISIS problem? JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Look, who knows. I mean,

that's just such a complicated hypothetical. I can't answer that. I will tell you, though, that taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: Joining me now from Des Moines, Maeve Reston, CNN national political reporter.

So, Maeve, Jeb Bush not exactly saying all the right things right now, but what about the war on ISIS?

MAEVE RESTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that was really a focus of Jeb Bush's today as he was here at the Iowa State Fair doing the food on the stick thing.

He really hammered Hillary Clinton hard and the Obama administration on that front, talked about how he would have a plan on day one to deal with ISIS and saying by implication that the Obama administration has not and here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: We should be taking out ISIS. We have a strategy to deal with ISIS, rather than admit that we don't have one. Each and every day that they exist, they gain more power, they recruit more people. The next president of the United States, if I'm president, we will have a strategy on day one to take out this grave threat to our national security and to the world. I promise you that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RESTON: So he was talking about ISIS today here at the Iowa State Fair. He did the soapbox, which is this give and take with Iowa voters, where they're allowed to yell out questions to Jeb and other candidates as they come here.

Handled all that pretty well. He still was getting a lot of questions about his brother here today and his last name and how he was going to deal with those challenges. But at the same time, there were a lot of people here who had met his brother, met his father in the past and came up and said that they really wanted to see him as the next president and that they loved his family. So it kind seemed to cut both ways here.

KAYE: And, Maeve, what are you hearing about rumors -- and I do call them rumors -- on a possible second presidential run by Al Gore?

RESTON: Well, I think right now, what they really are is really rumors.

There are some people out there who would like to see Al Gore run. Jeb Bush also addressed that, saying that Al Gore is qualified to run. But I think that at the current time, you have rumors about Biden, you have Biden who is definitely taking it more seriously. I don't know how much evidence we have yet about whether or not Al Gore is really going to consider another run.

KAYE: All right. Marco Rubio there in Iowa for us, thank you.

Joining me now, Bob Cusack, editor-in-chief for "The Hill," and Gloria Borger, CNN chief political analyst, to talk more about all this.

Bob, let's start with Jeb Bush, Bob. It seems like he's stuck not wanting to throw his brother under the bus and not wanting to show support for the war. Is it time for he and his team to figure out a diplomatic answer on this?

BOB CUSACK, "THE HILL": I think so. They have got to get the talking points on this question.

It's going to come up repeatedly both from journalists as well as voters. It's very interesting what Jeb Bush is trying to do in Iowa. He's not doing well in Iowa and will likely probably not win Iowa. That's going to make New Hampshire a must-win. I think his goal in Iowa, if he gets in the top three, which he's not in the top three in Iowa, that would be pretty good for Jeb Bush.

[15:05:05]

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: What he's trying to do, though, is turn the focus away from his answers in Iraq and whether getting rid of Saddam Hussein was worth it to pivoting to the fact that he believes that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are the ones who created the rise of ISIS because they didn't continue the surge that his brother had started that they, according to Bush in his other speech the other night, that they pulled out precipitously for political reasons, and that had they stayed in a little bit longer, they might have gotten the job done.

KAYE: But it could backfire on him, right, given his brother's war?

BORGER: Sure, given his brother's war, given the fact -- I was just reading this -- that 17 out of 21 of his foreign policy advisers used to work for his brother.

So it's one thing to distance yourself from your brother and say, I'm my own man, but then again, oops, well, I think I'm going to hire most of his people back. There's a little bit of a P.R. issue with that.

(CROSSTALK)

KAYE: Let me stick with you on this, one Gloria, CNN just hearing from another source inside the camp of former presidential candidate Al Gore saying that they haven't heard anything about a run.

BORGER: Right. Right.

KAYE: But this rumor came from somewhere. What are you hearing?

BORGER: You know, the same thing, honestly. I have been on the phone and spoke with somebody who is close to Gore and a bunch of people, actually. And, you know, obviously everybody wants to say Al Gore is great and he's wonderful and he could certainly be president and, by the way, maybe he won the presidency once a long time ago, 15 years ago.

But there is absolute -- the people I'm talking to are saying, no, there's really not much truth to it.

(CROSSTALK)

KAYE: But Bob, if he did -- Bob, if he did jump in, would he shake it up and, if so, how?

CUSACK: He would definitely shake it up. There's no doubt.

Al Gore is 67 years old and Joe Biden is going to be 73 in November. It's really now or never. This would be the last run for both men. And I think where there is smoke, there's fire. Maybe both men looking at the polls and maybe they get a bump from the speculation and maybe they take it very, very seriously.

I do think that Joe Biden is taking it far more seriously than Al Gore, but it also shows you that Hillary Clinton's poll numbers have taken a hit. So you get this speculation, and if she was doing fine in the polls, maybe you don't.

BORGER: You know, neither of them have any organization, neither of them have any money. They have name recognition. I do think that Biden is more seriously considering it.

But, you know, I think Al Gore's name just pops up because Hillary Clinton's poll numbers don't look so great.

KAYE: What do you think is holding up Biden's decision, though, Gloria?

BORGER: I think it's a big decision. He's got to think about it. He just lost his son. I don't think he was thinking about it very seriously back in 2012 or 2013. And I think he's thinking about it more seriously now precisely because of what is happening to Hillary Clinton.

But in politics, things go up and down and up and down, and it may look good for him now, but does Joe Biden want to be a spoiler if, in New Hampshire, he gets in and Bernie Sanders loses? I mean, if Bernie Sanders wins? I'm sorry. And then where does he go without money, organization or anything else?

I think there's a -- it's a very difficult and it's a personal decision. You know, he's going to be 73, right?

KAYE: Absolutely.

All right. Let's talk Trump, shall we? Bob, we know that Donald Trump is going to Iowa and he's promised helicopter rides, from what we understand. He's going to be able to give those helicopter rides now, but he's not taking the opportunity to get up on that soapbox. Do you think that's a bad idea? CUSACK: It's tough to argue what Donald Trump is doing in a strategy

because he -- as he points out repeatedly, he's winning. He's winning in Iowa, he's winning in New Hampshire. The tough part for him is that when other candidates start to drop out, where do their voters go?

And does Donald Trump have a ceiling? I do think that Donald Trump is going to have to shake a lot of hands in these early states. You can't just do media interviews, which he's done a ton of. You have got to meet these voters sometimes on multiple occasions.

And one other thing on the Clinton issue is that last week I was at Clinton headquarters. And to Gloria's point, their headquarters is a very efficient operation. And Joe Biden has to make that decision very soon.

BORGER: Can I just say, one thing about Donald Trump, he doesn't really need a soapbox, honestly.

KAYE: He is a soapbox.

BORGER: Wherever he goes, there is a soapbox. And people will follow him.

And I think candidates are very often afraid of these environments in which you just stand up there and people can heckle you. Looking back, Mitt Romney made his mistake saying corporations are people, too, in Iowa on a soapbox. And so I think if you kind of want to protect your candidate from that, as the Hillary Clinton people are known to do, maybe they wouldn't do that.

But just because they haven't said no doesn't mean that they won't end up there, by the way. They still could.

[15:10:03]

KAYE: Right. He's going to do that meet and greet and walk through the fair, so we will see how that goes and what comes out of his mouth.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Right.

KAYE: All right, Gloria Borger, Bob Cusack, thank you both very much.

BORGER: Thanks.

CUSACK: Thank you.

KAYE: Next, horrifying reporting about the ISIS sex trade, how the militants are raping young girls and saying it is not a sin. The reporter who spoke to those girls joining me live next.

Plus, emotional testimony from a police officer who's on trial for manslaughter in the death of a former college football player. Hear what he told the jury about the night of the shooting straight ahead.

And Donald Trump's latest attack on Hillary Clinton and President Obama. Trump says he would handle ISIS better. That is coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:15:07]

KAYE: Chemical weapons in the hands of ISIS militants terrorizing parts of Iraq and Syria. U.S. officials tell CNN there are credible reports ISIS fighters used mustard gas against Kurdish forces this week.

They say the gas may have came from old chemical weapons caches in Iraq or Syria possibly left over from the Assad regime, this as a group calling itself the Islamic State Hacking Division claims to have provided phone numbers, locations and even passwords for U.S. government and military personnel. While most of the so-called hit list appears to be outdated, the FBI and Pentagon both say that they are investigating.

Rape is not a sin, that is what ISIS militants tell the young girls that they hold hostage before they pray and then abuse them. It's a story uncovered by "The New York Times." The 15-year-old girl recalls being called a slave after the terrorist transported her on a bus crammed with women, separated her from her family, then sold her into the sex trade because of religion.

Joining me now, Rukmini Callimachi. She is a terror correspondent for "The New York Times" who spoke to some of these women in her new piece.

And just moments ago, even presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has tweeted of this report, writing: "Devastated by horrific reports of ISIS sex slavery. People of all faiths must unite to condemn and end these crimes."

So, Rukmini, it's great to have you here to talk about this. It's very powerful piece that you have written.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Thank you.

KAYE: How effective ISIS using God as a tool for terror and how effective is this really even in their recruiting?

CALLIMACHI: You know, that was really one of the darkest aspects of the reporting that I had to do in these last few weeks.

These girls and women that I spoke to talked about how on different occasions that they would have a back and forth and a discussion with the rapist and say to them, you know, why is it that you're doing this to me? You're hurting me. Stop. And would be told, what we are doing to you is something that is approved by God. They would open the Koran and take them to verses that spoke of female slaves, and they would cloak it in religious terminology and essentially give it a theological justification. And, anyway, I found it extremely dark and troubling to speak to these women.

KAYE: And it was because -- mainly because they are considered nonbelievers? Is that why?

CALLIMACHI: Exactly. Exactly.

So there are stories in the Hadiths, which are the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed, that talk about women and captive taken in battle and the idea being that if they are infidels, they can therefore be enslaved. Of course, modern scholars disagree with these interpretations and point to the fact that slavery has been renounced by a majority of Muslim nations.

But, in any case, as we know, ISIS is trying to create a society that mirrors the seventh century and the time period when the Prophet Mohammed walked the earth.

KAYE: And your article gets into how this was a pre-planned sex trade. Is that why these Yazidi women in particular are targets of these militants?

CALLIMACHI: Yes.

What was explained to me by scholars is that the Yazidis, who are not Muslim, they believe in seven sacred angels. Therefore, they're polytheists. And that puts them in a category of even greater jeopardy than Christians and Shiites.

In the Koran and in the Islamic tradition, there are some limited protections for so-called people of the book, including Christians, and the Yazidis do not have a book. They only have an oral tradition. However, what is interesting is, we were given access to a recently published Islamic State manual on sexual slavery which surfaced on Twitter last month.

It was provided to me by a scholar at Princeton University. And that particular manual makes clear that even the enslavement of Christian women is legitimate. So we don't completely understand why it is that so far we have seem to only be seeing Yazidi women as the victims of this particular horrific sex trade.

KAYE: They are managing to escape. How so?

CALLIMACHI: There's a pretty extensive smuggling operation that has been set up really by the Yazidi community.

It's being funded by Yazidi businessmen, with some help from the government of Iraq. And what is happening is these women have been held for over a year now. At some point, they are able to get their hands on a phone when the fighter is taking a bath, when he goes off to battle. Sometimes, they are even in a house with the wife of a fighter who helps them.

They use the phone to contact their family. Their family immediately puts them in touch with one of these smugglers, who then try to identify their location in Syria.

[15:20:03]

And sometimes these girls, especially the really young ones, all they will know is the name of the town. I'm in Raqqa. I'm in Shaddadi. These are obviously big places. And so the smuggler will ask them, look outside, describe the building. What neighborhood? Do you hear any sounds like a mosque? Do you see a school?

And they try to identify their location and then they give them a time and tell them to be outside and they show up in a car and whisk them away. I'm hearing that families are paying between $5,000 and $15,000 per girl, which, if you think about it, is not a huge amount of money to be saving a person from such horror.

And in the three weeks that I was in Iraq reporting this story, at least five girls came out. I was able to see one of them the night that she came out and she described this very process to me.

KAYE: Wow. It's an incredible story. I recommend everybody read it at "The New York Times" Web site.

Thank you so much, Rukmini Callimachi.

CALLIMACHI: Thank you, Randi.

KAYE: Appreciate it.

CALLIMACHI: Thank you so much.

KAYE: Coming next, a police officer takes the stand in his own defense. He faces manslaughter charges for shooting and killing an unarmed man. Gripping moments in court, as that officer breaks down explaining what was going through his mind that night. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:25:35]

KAYE: An officer on trial for killing an unarmed man in North Carolina is telling jurors his side of the story.

Officer Randall Kerrick, a white police officer, shot and killed Jonathan Ferrell, an unarmed black men, back in 2013. Ferrell was in a car accident and he was seeking help. Dash cam video of the shooting was released last week. And Kerrick says that he opened fire after Ferrell charged at him. Kerrick had just finished giving his testimony and he just told prosecutors that he doesn't remember how many shots he fired, but he was clear about why he pulled the trigger. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RANDALL KERRICK, DEFENDANT: He was going to assault me. He was going to take my gun from me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How far away was (OFF-MIKE)

KERRICK: Arm's reach. The suspect matched the description and I had absolutely no idea if he had a weapon on him or not and he just ran through a Taser.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: Joining me to talk more about this is defense attorney and HLN legal analyst Joey Jackson.

This really, Joey, is very much a trial of tape vs. testimony. Right?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Sure.

KAYE: Very much so.

So, what I want to do is I want to play a sound, some sound from this other officer who was at the scene first, before we get to Joey, and his name was officer Thornell Little. And he fired Taser first and he missed and he's recalling the events of that night while the dash cam video is shown to the jury. Listen to this first.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You said that you had jumped and walked up to you, he was saying, shoot me, shoot me?

THORNELL LITTLE, CHARLOTTE-MECKLENBURG POLICE DEPARTMENT: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was yelling? (OFF-MIKE)

LITTLE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you hear him say, shoot me, shoot me?

LITTLE: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you hear you say stop?

LITTLE: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: You have this officer saying that Ferrell said to him shoot me, shoot me. But you don't hear that on the video.

JACKSON: That's right.

KAYE: Like I said, there's a discrepancy between the testimony and what we see and hear on the dash cam.

JACKSON: Which is not unusual at all, Randi.

Here is what goes on. You know in a day and age of technology, you have the dash cam. And so of course a picture is worth 1,000 words and you can imagine what a video is worth. This is significant because now you have an officer testifying and you have video which is either going to corroborate and confirm what the officer says happened, not only as he testifies under oath on the stand, but as many officers, there were three officers who were there, and of course they gave statements to detectives that very night.

You want to match up what they say vs. what we actually see that appears on the dash cam. Of course, if there's any discrepancy, it's the prosecution who is going to bring that out. Now, though, to the issue of the officer testifying on his own behalf, it's always raised. Should you put your client on the stand, should you not put your client on the stand? What do you do?

KAYE: And you think it's a good thing?

JACKSON: I think, in this case, it has to be. Here's why.

You have a person who has to -- jurors are going to be instructed. The defense doesn't have to testify, anything else, but inquiring minds want to know. I think in this particular case, Randi, the defense needed to do three very important things. Thing number one, humanize your client. He's on that stand talking about his wife, his son, his mother.

KAYE: Getting emotional.

JACKSON: Very emotional. His mom died at 3 years old.

He had to work when he was 15 years old. His father was disabled. His sister was on the police force. This is a human being, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. When you make a decision, consider that. Number two, he was in fear. What did he say, Randi? I felt I was going to die.

Those are the magic words that you have to be in imminent fear if you're going to discharge that weapon and use lethal force. Number three, that his actions were consistent with his training, because remember something very significant here. He's the only officer to pull out his weapon, number one. Number two, officer Little, who he heard from, was closer to Ferrell and he pulled out his Taser.

KAYE: Right.

JACKSON: So why did you feel the need, sir, to pull out your actual firearm and use lethal force? His testimony was that he felt that he needed to cover that other officer and consistent with his training, if someone pulls out a Taser, you use lethal force if you need to, to cover them. Prosecution has a lot to say about that, though.

KAYE: They certainly got an earful from him.

(CROSSTALK)

JACKSON: Yes, they said.

KAYE: That's for sure.

A lot to process for that jury.

JACKSON: Needless to say.

KAYE: Yes. All right, Joey Jackson, good to see you, as always.

JACKSON: Thank you, Randi.

KAYE: Thank you.

Coming next, is the media giving Donald Trump a free ride? Michael Smerconish joins me next to sound off. Plus, a deeper look at Trump's family, the role his children play in his company -- straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)