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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Pentagon Chief Pressed for ISIS Strategy; Obama Marks 150th Anniversary of End of Slavery; Comey: Calif. Shooters Were Radicalized Years Ago. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired December 09, 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] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: That those first responders came upon that day.

Thank you all so much for joining us "AT THIS HOUR."

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: LEGAL VIEW with Ashleigh Banfield starts now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

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

We've got breaking news today on Capitol Hill and it is all about the U.S. military's part in destroying the terror organization President Obama called nothing more than thugs and killers, a death cult. We're talking about ISIS. How many U.S. troops will get orders to go and fight ISIS on their turf? How many air strikes will be launched? How much support? How much money? How much time? A lot of big questions. The Senate Armed Services Committee making those recommendation. And right now they are in session. The United States secretary of defense was under oath just a short time ago, then the FBI director answering the committee's questions. The chairman, Senator John McCain, has long pushed the fight them there instead of fight them here philosophy and he pressed Pentagon boss Ash Carter for a strategy and for action. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, CHAIRMAN, ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: Mr. Secretary, on the 1st of December, before the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Forbes asked General Dunford, quote, "have we currently contained ISIL." General Dunford, "we have not - we have not contained ISIL." Mr. Secretary, do you agree with general Dunford?

ASH CARTER, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I agree with what General Dunford said, yes.

MCCAIN: So if we have not contained - we have not contained ISIL, how are we to know - believe that we are succeeding against ISIL?

CARTER: Ah, I think that we are building momentum against ISIL.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BANFIELD: In a moment, I'm going to speak with Barbara Starr and our Pamela Brown about the implications of what happened on Capitol Hill. But right now I want to get you to the Emancipation Hall on Capitol Hill where there's a live event that's ongoing. The president is about to make remarks on the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment which formally abolished slavery. Let's listen.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Please, have a seat. Thank you.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free. That's what President Lincoln once wrote. Honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.

Mr. Speaker, leaders and members of both parties, distinguished guests, we gather here to commemorate a century and a half of freedom. Not simply for former slaves, but for all of us.

Today the issue of chattel slavery seems so simple, so obvious. It is wrong in every sense. Stealing men, women and children from their homelands, tearing husbands from wife, parent from child, stripped and sold to the highest bidder, shackled in chains and bloodied with the whip. It's antithetical not only to our conception of human rights and dignity, but to our conception of ourselves, of people founded on the premise that all are created equal.

And to many at that time, that judgment was clear as well. Preachers, black and white, railed against this moral outrage from the pulpit. Former slaves rattled the conscious of Americans in books and pamphlets and speeches. Men and women organized anti-slavery conventions and fund-raising drives. Farmers and shopkeepers opened their barns, their homes, their cellars as weigh stations on an underground railroad where African-Americans often risked their own freedom to ensure the freedom of others. And enslaved Americans, with no rights of their own, they ran north and kept the flame of freedom burning, passing it from one generation to the next with their faith and their dignity and their song.

[12:05:21] The reformers' passion only drove the protectors of the status quo to dig in harder. And for decades, America wrestled with the issue of slavery in a way that we have with no other, before or since. It shaped our politics and it nearly tore us asunder. Tensions ran so high, so personal, that at one point a lawmaker was beaten unconscious on the Senate floor. Eventually war broke out. Brother against brother, north against south.

At its heart, the question of slavery was never simply about civil rights. It was about the meaning of America. The kind of country we wanted to be. Whether this nation might fulfill the call of its birth. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

President Lincoln understood that if we were ever to fully realize that founding promise, it meant not just signing an emancipation proclamation, not just winning a war, it made making the most powerful, collective statement we can in our democracy, etching our values into our Constitution. He called it a king's cure for all the evils.

One hundred and fifty years proved the cure to be necessary, but not sufficient. Progress proved halting, too often deferred. Newly freed slaves may have been liberated by the letter of the law, but their daily lives told another tale. They couldn't vote. They couldn't fill most occupations. They couldn't protect themselves or their families from indignity or from violence. And so abolitionists and freed men and women and radical Republicans kept cajoling and kept rabble rousing and within a few years' of the war's end, at Appomattox, we passed two more amendments guaranteeing voting rights, birthright citizenship, equal protection under the law, and still it wasn't enough.

For another century, we saw segregation and Jim Crow make a mockery of these amendments, and we saw justice turn a blind eye to mobs with nooses slung over trees. We saw bullets and bombs terrorize generations. And yet, through all this, the call to freedom survived. We hold these truths to be self-evident. And eventually a new generation rose up to march and to organize and to stand up and to sit-in with the moral force of nonviolence and the sweet sound of those same freedom songs that slaves had sung so long ago, crying out not for special treatment, but for equal rights, calling out for basic justice promised to them almost a century before.

Like their abolitionist predecessors, they were plain, humble, ordinary people, armed with little but faith. Faith in the Almighty, faith in each other and faith in America. Hope in the face so often of all evidence to the contrary that something better lay around the bend.

[12:10:12] Because of them, maids and porters and students and farmers and priests and housewives, because of them, a civil rights law was passed and a voting rights law was signed, and doors of opportunity swung open not just for the black porter, but also for the white chamber maid and the immigrant dishwasher so that their daughters and their sons might finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing someone else's laundry or shining somebody else's shoes. Freedom for you and for me. Freedom for all of us.

And that's what we celebrate today. The long arc of progress. Progress that is never assured, never guaranteed, but always possible. Always there to be earned, no matter how stuck we might seem sometimes, no matter how divided or despairing we may appear, and no matter what ugliness may bubble up, progress so long as we're willing to push for it. So long as we're willing to reach for each other.

We would do a disservice to those warriors of justice, Tubman and Douglass and Lincoln and King, we were to deny that the scars of our nation's original sin are still with us today. We condemn ourselves to shackles once more if we fail to answer those who wonder if they're truly equals in their communities or in their justice systems or in a job interview. We betray the efforts of the past if we fail to pushback against bigotry in all its forms. But we betray our most noble past as well if we were to deny the possibility of movement, the possibility of progress if we were to let cynicism consume us and fear overwhelm us. If we lost hope.

For however slow, however incomplete, however harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey, in America we can create the change that we seek. All it requires is that our generation be willing to do what those who came before us have done, to rise above the cynicism and rise above the fear, to hold fast to our values, to see ourselves in each other, to cherish dignity and opportunity not just for our own children, but for somebody else's child, to remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others, regardless of what they looked like or where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they practice.

To be honorable - to be honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. To nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. To nobly save or to meanly lose the last best hope of earth. That is our choice. Today we affirm hope.

[12:15:55] Thank you. God bless you. May God bless the United States of America.

BANFIELD: That was quite a speech. And perhaps not the speech that was expected at this moment. We often get notice that the White House is going to have a ceremony commemorating this or that at a certain time, and this is an important one, without question, the first African- American president of the United States commemorating the 150th-year anniversary of the abolishment of slavery. That's huge. And we expected a great speech.

That was a speech that was touching on what this nation is going through right now on so many levels. Not only the battles that are being fought in the streets over African-Americans versus the police, not only the issues on the campaign trail with regard to Muslim- Americans and the rhetoric that's being called out by some candidates, in particular Donald Trump. I don't think that was veiled. I don't think what the president just said was veiled. However harshly and rudely challenged along our journey, regardless of what they look like or what faith they practice, the president saying, in the long arc of progress, he says, the warriors of justice, Tubman and Lincoln and King to - to deny the scars of our original sin that are with us today.

I mean that was really just a remarkable speech and I can't stress enough, again, an African-American president, the very first, delivering those remarks on this venerable day. It was a quite a moment.

I began the show on something completely different, and we are going to continue that very important, breaking news, but two things happening on Capitol Hill, that speech that you just heard that will get a lot of air play as the day goes on, and then also what was happening in the Senate Armed Services Committee where the secretary of defense is answering really tough questions. Tough questions that involve a tough opponent, a tough enemy named ISIS. The how, the when, the what, the where and how we spend the money to defeat ISIS, where they are or where they're going, we're going to analyze that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:22:08] BANFIELD: It has been a big day in news regarding a big American foe, ISIS, and it's where several committee hearings are actually ongoing, but the topics are bleeding into one another. On the left, you can see the FBI director, James Comey, who's been testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee today. And on the right, an ongoing hearing for the Senate Armed Services Committee. And earlier on, not too long ago, a critical witness, the sec. def. himself, the secretary of defense himself. He has since moved on and the committee members are continuing to grill other members of the military. But there were some really important points that were being made and challenged from those two hot seats.

So I'm going to turn to our two correspondents covering both of those angles and really effectively hitting the same story. Barbara Starr is covering the Pentagon and she's looking into that hearing, and then our Pamela Brown, covering the Justice Department, is looking at that hearing as well.

So, Barbara, if I can begin with you, and then we will converge on the notion of where ISIS figures into all of this. But with you I'd like to talk about the battle that the sec def is talking about and how it is changing, where it is going and what's different.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, what the military will tell you is that they are upping their game against ISIS. That in recent weeks they've gotten a number of proposals approved by the White House, by the president, to apply even more military power to this. One of the fundamentals is the use of U.S. special forces that are preparing to go into northern Iraq and northern Syria to conduct raids against senior ISIS operatives.

But Defense Secretary Carter also making the point he wants more help from Arab nations and from European partners on all military elements of this. He wants them to jump in. Have a listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASH CARTER, DEFENSE SECRETARY: More American forces, and I would say special forces, but others as well that train, advice, assist and accompany that are not special forces, we are doing more -

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), CHAIRMAN, SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: I was talking - I was talking about a multi-national force.

CARTER: Well, there, Mr. Chairman, as I indicated, I too wish that particularly the Sunni Arab nations of the gulf would do more. And going way back to -

MCCAIN: They are willing to do so. There's a United States commitment.

CARTER: To March, I've had - I've had lengthy conversations with -

MCCAIN: And so have I.

CARTER: Representatives there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: And so who you're hearing there, of course, is Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pretty irate and, shall we say, short of patience with the Pentagon's testimony today. He - McCain wants to see more progress and wants to see it a lot faster. Not at all clear that Carter was able to give him those assurances.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Thank you, Barbara. And so I always listen for what John McCain does and how he asks his questions being the veteran that he is. It's a dynamic that is really intriguing when he challenges the secretary of defense.

[12:25:11] Hold that thought for a moment, Barbara, if you will, because there are two fronts in this war on terror at this point when it comes to ISIS. Number one, what Barbara was talking about and the military effort against them, and then, Pamela Brown, the domestic part of it. We just had 14 people murdered by a terrorist couple and there's a lot of talk about when they became radicalized, when effectively this American citizen got his wife and became a so-called soldier for this theory of ISIS. So walk me through what the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing has been able to pull out of James Comey, the FBI director.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ashleigh, James Comey going on the record today and saying essentially what we've been reporting, that this couple was radicalized for at least two year. And he actually said that they connected online about jihad. They were talking about that a couple of year ago. And it's significant because this would have been before ISIS and before the wife, Tashfeen Malik, received her fiance visa to come to the U.S. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES COMEY, FBI DIRECTOR: Our investigation to date, which I can only say so much about at this point, indicates that they were actually radicalized before they started courting or dating each other online. And online, as late as - as early as the end of 2013, they were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and then married and lived together in the United States. We also believe they were inspired by foreign terrorist organizations. We're working very hard to understand exactly their association and the source of their inspiration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So this, of course, raises the question, was this an arranged marriage. Director Comey was asked that today. He said that would be a game-changer if so. Investigators are still trying to the figure that all out. But, Ashleigh, we're learning from sources that Syed Farook may have been planning to launch an attack a few year ago, back in 2012, and he didn't follow through with it. But the question is, was he seeking a jihadi bride. All of these are questions that investigators are trying to answer right now.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: And clearly an important mission here on the home front to try to battle these domestic terrorists.

Pam Brown, thank you for that. And our thanks to Barbara Starr as well.

Coming up on that other front, you often hear politicians say, either we fight them there or we fight them here. But as for the fighting there, how might that change, and what about all those American advisers who are officially our boots on the ground? Are they about to experience some extreme mission creep? We're going to talk about that in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)