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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Troop Withdrawal Delay; Clinton Courts Hispanics. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired October 15, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: That's all for us "AT THIS HOUR." LEGAL VIEW with Ashleigh Banfield starts right now.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

I want to begin with breaking news today. Yet another delay in President Obama's long promised troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The president announcing last hour that U.S. forces will remain in the country at their current levels through most of the end of his term, 2016. This is the second time the drawdown has been put on hold this year, prolonging the American role in a war that has now lasted 14 years, officially America's longest. The announcement comes as insurgents are now in more places in that country than they've been since post-9/11 invasion, according to the United Nations. President Obama stressing that he will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for terrorists to attack the United States again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Afghan forces are still not as strong as they need to be. They are developing critical capabilities, intelligence, logistics, aviation, command and control. And, meanwhile, the Taliban has made gains, particularly in rural areas, and can still launch deadly attacks in cities, including Kabul. Much of this was predictable. We understood that as we transitioned, that the Taliban would try to exploit some of our movements out of particular areas and that it would take time for Afghan security forces to strengthen.

This decision is not disappointing. Continually my goal has been to make sure that we give every opportunity for Afghanistan to succeed, while we're still making sure that we're meeting our core missions. And as I've continually said, my approach is to assess the situation on the ground, figure out what's working, figure out what's not working, make adjustments where necessary. This isn't the first time those adjustments have been made. This won't probably be the last.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Maintaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan, even at their current levels, comes with a huge price tag. That is not a typo, folks. According to one Obama administration official, this costs the United States about $14.6 billion. And that's every year. Not until now, that's every single year. The Congressional Budget Office estimated as of the end of last year, the U.S. has spent $686 billion on that war.

Joining me now to discuss, Congressman Mac Thornberry, a Republican from Texas, but also the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

So it is particularly fortunate to have you here today to talk about this. This is the endless war. This is the war that won't end. This is the longest war. There's all sorts of names that we've ascribed to this. What I haven't heard is a name that tells me that something's going to change in policy that hasn't repeated itself in that region for decades and decades.

REP. WILLIAM "MAC" THORNBERRY (R), TEXAS: Yes. I think the short answer is, there is no magic short cut that gets us to the end of this war that we can see. But what is clear is that this threat is real and persisting and actually evolving in different ways. So in Afghanistan today, you not only have al Qaeda and the Taliban, you have a growing ISIS presence. So the idea that we would leave Afghanistan would be very disturbing. I think the fact that we would stay engaged is good, but nobody should think, with 5,500 troops, that we're going to solve all the security problems.

BANFIELD: You were just there last month.

THORNBERRY: I was.

BANFIELD: Came back, you urged the Obama administration, keep the levels where they are.

THORNBERRY: Yes.

BANFIELD: Stop the drawdown. And now we have this announcement. You know, I also was there, there as we were effectively at the tip of the spear back in 2001. And I took note of a comment that you made in something you just recently wrote, and it's that a lot has changed in Afghanistan. It is true, a lot of names change, a lot of factions change, but what doesn't change there, in my estimation at least, is the fighting. It has been the same for the Soviets. It was the same for the Americans in the '80s. It is effectively the same now. There was the Northern Alliance before and now we're looking at ISIS. Groups change, affiliations change, but fighting does not seem to change. What makes anyone think that staying a little longer is going to make that country ready to look after itself?

THORNBERRY: Well, remember, before the Soviet invasion in '79, Afghanistan had a prolonged period of relative stability. Now, was it - did it have a living standard the same as the United States? Of course not. And I think we have adjusted our expectations not to make it like the United States but to make it good enough that their government can at least maintain enough security to keep the terrorists down. And that's our interest. We're not there to remake Afghanistan. We're there to protect our security. And you talked about the cost of - and it is substantial, but -

[12:05:13] BANFIELD: 14.6. It's very rare, by the way, that I get to talk to a Republican about a policy that continues spending, especially at these levels.

THORNBERRY: No. Yes, no, it is true, it costs a lot of money. At the same time, 9/11 cost this country a tremendous amount of money and lives and it originated from Afghanistan. I believe terrorists will always be drawn to that country for the narcotics financing, because of the history, because of the ungoverned spaces. So what we're trying to do is get the Afghan security forces up to a level where they can at least maintain sufficient control of their country.

BANFIELD: Mr. Chairman, would we be there now if we didn't take our eyes off this prize effectively and switch to the west and get mired in Iraq? Would we be there in Afghanistan right now?

THORNBERRY: Well, it's hard to predict what would have happened under alternative scenarios. I do think we have learned as we go how to more effectively train the Afghan forces. And you talk about some of the things that have changed. One of the things that's changed is, they are doing all the combat missions on their own now with some advice from us. So we should praise them for the strides they have made, for a government that wants to work with us for a change versus a Karzai government, and let them know that we're going to be there to help them get to the next level.

BANFIELD: That is hard. That is hard because there is just untold amounts of corruption throughout that country.

THORNBERRY: Sure.

BANFIELD: And that was the same story when I was there. I'm sure it was the same with you last month -

THORNBERRY: Sure.

BANFIELD: And it was the same for the British and the Russians -

THORNBERRY: Yes.

BANFIELD: And the first round of Americans.

THORNBERRY: Sure.

BANFIELD: Let me switch gears just because it's great to have you here.

THORNBERRY: Yes.

BANFIELD: Russian President Putin has been saying all sorts of things and his foreign ministry of late just suggested that he, or at least their country and this country, are, quote, "moving closer" to some sort of consensus on what to do about these air raids in Syria. Is that true?

THORNBERRY: If there is a consensus, it is us going to the Russians asking their permission. Remember, when the air strikes started by Russia, they came to us and said, you will not fly American airplanes in this place at this time. And so their idea of consensus seems to be that we ask permission from the Russians. Now, there have been talks to try to make sure airplanes don't run into each other, you know, in the skies above Syria and yet the Russians do not give us warning about cruise missile launches and they conduct very aggressive air maneuvers over our -

BANFIELD: So are we moving closer in this kind of intelligence sharing or at least the, you know -

THORNBERRY: Well, there - there are some discussions -

BANFIELD: Deconfliction.

THORNBERRY: Yes, that's the phrase. There are some discussions. How open the Russians are being with us, I don't know. Clearly the Russians see themselves as being the dominant player in this region. We would be a subsidiary player. And I'm sure that that's what Putin's striving for.

BANFIELD: And Donald Trump, let's just throw him into the mix now, shall we, suggests, let them do that. Why not let them go ahead and make any mistake they want to or fight the war for us. Is there - is there any legitimacy to that - to that theory?

THORNBERRY: I don't think so. One, they're not fighting our war for us. Russia is not focused on ISIS. They're focused on protecting Assad. So, meanwhile, ISIS continues to have its safe havens in Syria from which it can launch attacks against us. Secondly, countries around the world are watching whether we're going to disengage and back away, and they're making judgment about how reliable a friend we are. And they're watching our own budget debates here at home. The president threatens to veto our own defense bill that provides exactly as much money as he asks for in a time of international tension. All of those things play to adversaries and friends around the world as they're evaluating the United States.

BANFIELD: So I do have this shopping list again because it's lovely to have a congressman in New York City sitting beside me, so I'm just throw one more piece of spaghetti at the frig if I can.

THORNBERRY: Sure.

BANFIELD: And that is about the Benghazi committee. We have person number three coming out and suggesting that this committee to investigate what happened in Benghazi was specifically motivated by the politics of Hillary Clinton. As Kevin McCarthy suggested, the poll numbers for Hillary Clinton came down after Benghazi - the investigative committee launched its work. And now we have Representative Richard Hanna, a Republican, from New York. These people were not caught on secret recordings. They said so of their own volition. Kevin McCarthy was in a live interview. This is troublesome for the Republicans. This is troublesome for a policy that the Republicans have held tenaciously. And it could be troublesome for the race as well. What's your response to now number three coming out against this - this motivation?

THORNBERRY: Well, let me tell you what I know from firsthand experience. Because before the select committee was created, we had investigations in the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee about what happened with Benghazi. And we got pretty good cooperation from the military, the intelligence community. What we never got cooperation from in Congress was from the State Department, the decisions that they made before, during and after the Benghazi raid. So that was the reason that Speaker Boehner created this select committee to be able to hone in and get information from the State Department that it had been very reluctant to provide it.

[12:10:21] Now, it is true, in the course of that investigation, then the world discovered that Mrs. Clinton had this separate e-mail account. Nobody knew that. It only came out because this committee was trying to understand what happened in Benghazi. But the motivation for the creation of the committee was, one, we owe it to the people who died, and, secondly, there are people serving in our embassies all around the world who need to be protected and we need to learn the lessons to make sure there's not a repeat of Benghazi that affects them.

BANFIELD: Chairman Thornberry, I wish I could keep you here for the whole hour because I'm only part way into the shopping list, but thank you for coming in.

THORNBERRY: Thanks for having me.

BANFIELD: And, by the way, you're invited to New York on the set any time.

THORNBERRY: Thank you. Appreciate it.

BANFIELD: We have a lot to talk about. Thank you so much. Safe travels while you're here in New York.

In the meantime, we're going to look a lot closer into this. I've got an expert panel, including Colonel Francona, who knows a thing or two about Afghanistan. Jim Sciutto as well. We're going to talk a little bit more about the drawdown in Afghanistan and why it's going to be several more years. That's after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:23] BANFIELD: Want to dig a little deeper now on this big announcement from the president, just within the hour, delaying the time line for that troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Joining me now, CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto and CNN military analyst Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona.

First to you, Jim Sciutto, if I can. I was sort of astounded at the opening lines that the president used in his address today, and that was, and I'll quote him, "last December, more than 13 years after our nation was attacked by al Qaeda on 9/11, America's combat mission in Afghanistan came to a responsible end." It looks to me like there's a whole lot of combat going on, especially when we're flying into air strikes in Kunduz just in the last two weeks. Why is there this mincing of words and is that significant given what we heard today? JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, they

define combat very narrowly. You heard the president say combat mission ended. Later he said, they ended major combat operations. The fact is, you do have U.S. troops doing more than counterterror there. You have forward deployed advisers. For instance, during the assault on Kunduz by the Taliban, you had U.S. advisers forward deployed who, in fact, called in that air strike, which, unfortunately, hit the hospital of MSF, Medecins Sans Frontieres. That's not combat in the sense if I am sitting there on one side of the line shooting at the other guys, but they are very close to the front lines, which is, of course, an element of danger for those troops, but very directly involved in the combat if you're calling in close air support.

The administration has done this as well in Iraq, stretching that definition, or rather mincing or confining the definition of combat so narrowly to fall under this idea that the combat mission is over. But the fact is, and with this extension of the troops there, the administration is acknowledging that Afghan security forces aren't up to the task on their own of combating the Taliban. They need American help. That won't be Americans sort of in those gunfights necessarily, but they will be very close to the front lines with a very important combat role. The administration calls it counterterror, but I like to talk to a lot of folks in this building and, you know, they have a different sense of what that means.

BANFIELD: War, yes, because it sure looks like war.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BANFIELD: I mean, I'll tell you.

Colonel Francona, if you could weigh in on this as well. It seems that if anybody was snoozing, the name ISIS started creeping into the headlines with regards to Afghanistan. I'm not talking Iraq. I'm not talking Syria. I'm not talking the caliphate to the west. I'm talking Afghanistan. And I think people might be surprised to now realize originally it was al Qaeda, it was the Taliban, and now ISIS is a real issue in that country. Do you think that the rise of ISIS in Afghanistan has a lot to do with the fact that we now find ourselves, yet again, having to slug it out in the same kinds of levels, it seems, that we have for the last decade and a half?

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, I think it's just emblematic of the whole problem there. I mean you've got multiple factions there. OK, now we - you talk about the Taliban, you talk about al Qaeda. Now we see ISIS there.

Afghanistan is a magnet for these kind of groups because they can work there, they can operate effectively because there's no real central government. And as Jim said, and as the president has admitted, the Afghan forces are not capable of performing this mission. And they're going to need our help for a long time.

Now, I applaud the president's decision to not draw down the force as fast, but he's still drawing it down. I mean we're way below the troop level that the Pentagon wanted in the beginning to do this train and assist mission. And you can see from what's happening in the country, the Taliban is spread out all over, in many more places than they were before. Al Qaeda is still there. And now we've got this introduction of ISIS. So I don't think that we're - you know, we're being as effective as we need to be. The Afghans certainly aren't up to the task. And just, you know, to give you an example of that, look at what happened in Kunduz. The Taliban attacked Kunduz and the Afghan army collapsed in front of them.

BANFIELD: We've heard that story before elsewhere in Iraq.

All right, we'll have to leave it there. Jim, thank you. I appreciate it. Rick, thank you as well.

FRANCONA: Sure.

BANFIELD: Do appreciate both of your perspectives.

[12:19:21] Coming up next, we're going to hit the campaign trail. Hillary Clinton is holding court this hour with a crucial constituency base. She is in Texas. Not just any Texas. She's at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, getting ready to go live at that lectern. Just ahead, this will be a critical, critical speech for Hillary and for Latinos. A live remark, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Another bombshell allegation about a commission that was set up to investigate what happened in Benghazi, Libya. Exactly a week before Hillary Clinton testifies before that commission panel, a second Republican congressman is suggesting that that commission was politically motivated, designed to go after Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. Congressman Richard Hanna from New York, who is not a member of the committee, made the allegations in a New York radio show and here is part of that interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RICHARD HANNA (R), NEW YORK: I think that there is a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton. And, you know, I think there's also a lot of it that's important that - that we needed to get to the bottom of this. But this has been the longest investigation. Longer than Watergate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Earlier, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy himself linked the Benghazi panel's efforts to a download slide in Clinton's poll numbers. McCarthy later walked back those remarks. But it may have helped derail his own bid to become House speaker.

[12:25:15] And just days ago, this whistleblower and former investigator with the panel, Air Force Reserve Major Bradley Podliska spoke with CNN and he told us, it started out as a fact finding mission but then began to focus almost exclusively on Clinton after the e-mail controversy broke out. The conservative Republican served nearly 10 months on the committee before he was fired.

Clinton's campaign says the new revelations show that the committee has always been partisan, aimed at sinking her presidential prospects. Hillary Clinton,, for her part, is campaigning in San Antonio today. And our national political reporter Maeve Reston is on the trail with the Hillary camp.

So I've just got to ask you, I imagine that as this news was breaking last night, her staff and particularly any writers she may employ were furiously crossing out the top of the speech to sort of be able to telegraph this to the national audience as quickly and as loudly as possible. Am I wrong?

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Absolutely. I mean this is news, bombshell news, as you mentioned, that absolutely is what Hillary Clinton wants to hear about what she's called a partisan investigation. We may hear her address that at this rally in San Antonio later today. She's - she's - but she's really focused on galvanizing Latinos here in Texas and across the country because she is looking to move on to other issues.

We also know from our CNN's Dan Merica that she's going to hit Bernie Sanders today on gun control and what he has been talking about on that issue. So the Benghazi think only helps to galvanize her base, really help activate and excite Democratic voters about next year.

BANFIELD: And, you know, she polls very, very well, particularly in the south, with minorities. And here she is speaking with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in San Antonio. I know it's an important constituency for her, but does she need it or does she already have it sewn up or does every politician know you can never assume you got it all?

RESTON: Well, she doesn't necessarily have it sewn up. Obviously, she's got Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio coming after her from the Republican side. But this is the bedrock of Hillary Clinton's support, Latinos. If you look back at the 2008 race, she did very well with Latinos, but she's not taking anything for granted this time. She's been out there talking about immigration issues, talking about the Obama administration's record on deportations, saying that she would do more to bring families together. And that's going to be her focus here today. Bernie Sanders is actually not doing well among Latinos and African-Americans. They're still with Hillary, but she is not taking anything for granted.

BANFIELD: OK. All right, Maeve, thanks so much. We're going to keep an eye on things behind you -

RESTON: Thanks.

BANFIELD: And as soon as the secretary, the senator, the candidate goes live, we want to go live as well. Thank you, Maeve Reston, for doing all that work.

RESTON: Thanks. BANFIELD: Coming up next, attorneys for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert say that he is ready to plead guilty, guilty to federal hush money charges. We've got the details about the deal and what it will mean for the former speaker of the House, next.

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