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Obama Releases Plan to Close Guantanamo; Ben Carson's Controversial Race Comment about Obama; Mysterious Phone Call Prior to Uber Driver Shooting Spree. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired February 23, 2016 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: At this point, there are 91 detainees left at Guantanamo Bay. The plan involves sending some of them to other countries for those countries to watch over them, then moving the rest, those who cannot be transferred abroad because they have been deemed too dangerous, to prisons and DOD facilities here in the United States.

In the announcement, the president anticipated a political fight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Given the stakes involved for our security, this plan deserves a fair hearing.

Even in an election year, we should be able to have an open, honest, good-faith dialogue about how best to ensure our national security.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Republicans on the campaign trail immediately chiming in. You'll hear from them in a moment.

Also Kansas Republican Senator Pat Roberts reacted this way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PAT ROBERTS, (R), KANSAS: This is what I think of the president's plan to send terrorists to the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Joining me to talk more about this, John Yoo, a former DOD official who wrote the memos authorizing enhanced interrogation under the Bush administration. He also helped establish those who were labeled, quote/unquote, "enemy combatants," and that they could be held at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. He is now a law professor at Berkeley. He's the editor of the newly released book, "Liberty's Nemesis: The Unchecked Expansion of the State."

Thank you for being with me.

Also with us, Karen Greenberg, the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University Law School, also author of "The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days." Thank you both for joining me.

Let me start with you, Karen.

How likely is it that the president will be able to successfully push this through?

KAREN GREENBERG, DIRECTOR, CENTER ON NATIONAL SECURITY, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL & AUTHOR: It's hard to make a prediction --

HARLOW: It's been over 10 years --

(CROSSTALK)

GREENBERG: I think he's going to be able to do it. I think the timing is right, I think he can get certain people like John McCain on board who had asked for this plan to be submitted. I think he may be able to pull some kind of bipartisan coalition together. I do thing the declining numbers of detainees, which are now below 100 and could go below 50, and make a big difference in terms of bringing the detainees to the United States. So I think there's a possibility this could happen.

HARLOW: You do?

GREENBERG: I also think, as he said today in his speech and repeated several times, he really wants this to happen. And whereas, he might have put it aside for other reasons earlier in his presidency, he seems to really --

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: -- Bush before him wanted it closed.

GREENBERG: But he did not put the process in motion. Bush did pretty well, if you think about it. Returned over 500 detainees to places around the globe. So he knew from the beginning that this was going to have to be withered down to a smaller number

HARLOW: All right, so, John, to you.

When you look at this plan, being sort of one of the architects of, you know, what would enable people to be held there after 9/11, what do you see as the single biggest problem with the plan?

JOHN YOO, LAW PROFESSOR, USC, BERKELEY & FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL: I think it's dead on arrival in Congress. You played the clip of Senator Roberts refusing to go along. I think the majority of the Republicans in the Senate are not going to go along with it, not to mention in the House.

And they've, as you know, have already passed a funding ban prohibiting any of the detainees from being brought into the United States. So President Obama I think, as a constitutional matter, is free to send any of the detainees abroad to other countries, even though the Defense Department and the intelligence agencies feel about a third of them somehow go back into the fight in one way or the other. But I don't think he's going to be able to shut the prison down if he's got to bring those remaining 90 or 50 or whatever the last number is back into the United States where Congress has prohibited all funds being used to support that process.

HARLOW: John, what we do know is that three previously released Gitmo detainees have gone on to join AQAP. That's why they can't return those from Yemen to Yemen. That's the big concern right now. For Americans sitting at home, perhaps in one of the states where these detainees will be transferred, how concerned do you think they should be about radicalizing others, about rejoining the fight?

YOO: We don't have any data on that, of course, because none of them have been brought back to the United States already. But I'll remind you, one of the reasons this became such a big deal was because the administration wanted to bring the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to New York City for a trial and detain him in downtown New York City. And even if they were secured in the facility, you have to be worried that terrorist groups are going to try to break them out, launch attacks around the facility. What community would want that in their neighborhood? No matter whether there's a military base or a secure prison or not.

HARLOW: Karen, to you. Here's just one logistical, what seems to me like a big hang-up on all this, and that is the fact the U.S. military came to Congress in January and said, you know, they are legally prevented from assisting in transferring them to prisons in the United States, because of two bills, the defense authorization bill and the defense appropriation bill, which bars them from doing so, which President Obama signed.

[14:35:19] GREENBERG: Correct.

HARLOW: Big roadblock?

GREENBERG: It's been a roadblock for several years. It's been part of the National Defense Authorization Act. President Obama -- and this is something you might want to ask Professor Yoo about -- could reserve the right at the end to exercise commander-in-chief powers.

(CROSSTALK)

GREENBERG: He may be able to. Some people think he can do that, particularly people who defend commander-in-chief powers, as, Professor, you have.

But I want to address it issue of safety. The idea there would be some kind of terrorist attack against a trial, against a terrorist, a known terrorist, is not proven by anything, and it is disproven by the number of terrorism trials we've had in this country. Not only have we tried people responsible for lethal attacks against American citizens around the world but we've had over 500 prosecutions of terrorists since 9/11, of suspected terrorists since 9/11, most of them convictions. They're serving time, many of them life sentences in Colorado and other places, supermax and maximum security prisons. One of the points Obama was trying to make today is that there's a

need for the federal courts to step back in here. So the idea that some kind of terrorist attack is going to be unleashed by terrorism prosecutions has not been proven out in anyway. And so it's not just -- it's not just something that we can perceive.

The real reason New York politicians did not want the trial of --

HARLOW: Khalid Shaikh Mohammad.

GREENBERG: -- Khalid Shaikh Mohammed here had to do with shop owners in the area, as I understand it, who thought that their businesses would be hurt by the amount of presence of security forces, and that's a little different than saying there was a fear of a terrorist attack.

HARLOW: Let me get John back in here.

John, I want you to react to that and ask you about this, in terms of someone who helps formalize the language around enemy combatants and et cetera. Last week, we heard Donald Trump at this campaign event in South Carolina, when he was asked about water boarding, and he referred to it as, quote, "sort of the least form of torture" or the, quote, "minimal form." He suggested that the U.S. should and can go beyond water boarding, use other methods of terror. And he said in that response, quote, "torture works." The evidence doesn't point to that. I mean, as you know, when you look at interrogation evidence, it shows that non-torture-based interrogation often proves more effective in getting accurate information. What do you make of Trump's comments?

YOO: Well, Poppy, let me respond to your question, first, and then this commander-in-chief power issue, second.

I think Trump's wrong on this. I think he -- if you look at his campaign statements, he's not interested in interrogation methods for the reason that we were in the Bush administration, which was in the first few months after the 9/11 attacks, we had a huge need for intelligence to try to prevent more attacks on the United States and our allies and our forces abroad. When Trump talks about interrogation or water boarding, he seems to talk about it as a form of punishment or revenge, which I don't think is the purpose of it. I don't think is the purpose of it. And I agree with you. If that's the point of it, it's not going to work. And the United States shouldn't do it. It should only be used I think in rare circumstances like those we had in the months after 9/11.

In response to your earlier question, about whether the president has broad commander-in-chief authority. I think -- I don't think there are many people who think that he has more power than I think he does. But the one principle in American history and our Constitution is that the Congress has the power of the purse. And no president I think has the power to just take money out of the treasury and use it how he sees fit. The only president who ever did that was Abraham Lincoln at the start of the Civil War when Congress wasn't in session. And President Obama is not President Lincoln, and this is the last year of his presidency, not the start of the Civil War. There's no emergency that would require any president to have to break that fundamental constitutional principle.

I'm surprised to hear critics of the Bush administration suddenly running around to embrace the commander-in-chief power to do things, which I think they heavily criticized him for doing when he was in office.

(CROSSTALK)

YOO: So I'm trying to be consistent. Throughout, the funding power has always been a check on the presidency.

(CROSSTALK)

[14:39:35] HARLOW: John Yoo, I have to leave it there.

Karen Greenberg, I have to leave it there.

But I appreciate you both being on. We'll keep talking about this because it is not over.

Thank you very much.

Coming up next, GOP presidential candidate, Ben Carson, says that President Obama was, quote, "raised white" and just doesn't understand African-Americans, like he can. What does he mean by that, and why did he say it now? We'll speak with him live about it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Dr. Ben Carson, the Republican candidate, despite his last- place finish in South Carolina and his sixth-place standing in the polls, is, for some reason, speaking about the president's race. Carson says Obama was, quote, "raised white and can't understand what it means to be black in America."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. BEN CARSON, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & RETIRED NEUROSURGEON: I was proud we broke the color barrier when he was elected. But I also recognize his experience and my experience are night and day different. He didn't grow up like I grew up by any stretch of the imagination.

UNIDENTIFIED POLITICO CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

CARSON: Not even close.

UNIDENTIFIED POLITICO CORRESPONDENT: He's an African/American as opposed to an African-American.

CARSON: He's an African/American. He was, you know, raised white. Many of his formative years were spent in Indonesia. So for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans I think is a bit of a stretch.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:45:30] HARLOW: All right, that's what Carson told "Politico" in a podcast interview last night. President Obama is biracial. He was born in the U.S. he lived in Indonesia for four years, from age 6 to age 10, just to clarify what Carson said there. His comments have a lot of people talk.

I want to bring in CNN political commentator, Morehouse College professor, Marc Lamont Hill, to talk about it.

Marc, your take? What did you think when you heard this, when you read it?

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I said, wow, Ben Carson must be really low in the polls. This is a conversation starter that will get him some much-needed attention but I'm not sure he hit the nail on the head here.

It's a very complex conversation. First of all, he is right that President Obama had a set of experiences that are very different than those of Ben Carson's, but most people had a set experiences that are different than Carson and Obama. There's no singular way to be black. Black looks a lot of different ways. Did Obama's experience that didn't come out the tradition of being descendants of slaves in Africa differ? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean he doesn't know what it means to be black. It doesn't mean he's not legitimately black. The subtext of Ben Carson's comments were he doesn't understand blackness and that Ben Carson, if he wins, would really be the first black president. And that part I think is strongly out of step with what most people think.

HARLOW: I thought one other thing that stood out from this interview is when Carson said -- I'm going to quote here -- he said, "I think the way I am treated, you know, by the left is racism." He said he didn't feel any racism from anyone in his own party, but he feels it from, quote/unquote, "progressives or from the left."

I know that you lean left politically. Do you think he has a point there? What do you make of that?

LAMONT HILL: He certainly is the target of some criticism. Ironically, sometimes people will say Ben Carson's not really black because he's a Republican, so I find it -- he always balks at that. Even at that interview, he talks about the fact that people question his blackness because he's a Republican --

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: -- what he was referring to --

(CROSSTALK)

LAMONT HILL: So it's -- right, it's ironic he's questioning someone's blackness because of how they were raised. President Obama was raised by a white person. That doesn't mean he

was raised white, any more than the fact he was raised by a woman means he was raised as a woman, right? It's possible for a white person to raise a black child. It happens all the time.

Yes, to answer your question, of course, there's a lot of unfair criticism of people against black conservatives. I don't think every black conservative is an Uncle Tom. I don't think any of them are Uncle Toms because they're conservatives. Sometimes conservatives get that unfair label, absolutely correct. But Carson is ignoring the fact that Obama gets treated black when he walks down the street. If he were not president of the United States, he would be treated by law enforcement as if he were black, that the hate and the animus and the racism that he received while he's running for president, while he's been in the office, is because he's black. He may not be black to Ben Carson, but he's black to most people.

HARLOW: Marc Lamont Hill, I wish we had more time. Thank you very much.

LAMONT HILL: My pleasure.

HARLOW: And GOP presidential candidate, Dr. Ben Carson, will join me live at the top of the next hour. Make sure you stay with us for that. We'll talk to him about those comments, find out more of what he meant, and obviously talk to him about the big day in Nevada.

Also, at any moment, Donald Trump will speak live at his final rally before people in Nevada go to caucus. Will he continue his attacks? What will he try to hammer home, try to secure those delegates?

And a mystery phone call now at the center of an investigation into a horrific killing spree over the weekend allegedly by an Uber drive. Who called him before the attacks? What made him act this way? We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:53:07] HARLOW: The motive in the deadly shooting spree in Kalamazoo, Michigan, remains a mystery today. The suspect, 45-year- old Jason Dalton, has been denied bail and officials say that Dalton told them that he, quote, "took people's lives." A gun shop owner also now has told CNN that Dalton bought a heavy duty jacket from his store that can hold a pistol just hours before the killing spree.

While authorities investigate a motive, questions remain about a mysterious phone call that Dalton allegedly took while driving an Uber customer the night of the killings. That passenger also said he thinks Dalton may have switched vehicles.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATT MELLEN, WITNESS: We got about a mile from my house and he received a telephone call. It was over the Blue Tooth inside the car so I could hear kind of the conversation. He stated that he had a rider in the car and he would call them back immediately after he dropped me off. Once he hung up with that phone call is when he started driving really erratically. He was running red lights at that point, squealing the tires. He ran a stop sign and sideswiped another vehicle.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: CNN's Nick Valencia, live for us in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

I know that finally, Nick, we're starting to hear from some more witnesses. What are they hearing you?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I spoke with Tammy George, the neighbor of the first victim shot by this alleged gunman in his shooting rampage on Saturday night. Tammy George tells when she was home at the time of the shooting, when she heard what she thought were fireworks. Poppy, that's when she realized things were very serious. She saw her neighbor, Tiana Carruthers (ph), laying on the ground pleading for help. She called her neighbor, Tiana (ph), a hero and said that she stepped between the gunmen and some children the suspect appeared to be aiming for.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAMMY GEORGE, WITNESS: At first, I actually thought she had tripped, because she was right near the curb.

VALENCIA: She fell right there?

[14:55:15] GEORGE: Yes, so I thought she had tripped. And then asking about her babies, and saying, why did he shoot me. That's when I realized it was not fireworks. It was an actual shooting.

A car drove by, asked if they knew Misty, and they said no. And then it had circled around again. And I don't know if it was her mother instinct, she just knew something was wrong, told them to run.

VALENCIA: So she was a hero in all of this?

GEORGE: Yes.

VALENCIA: Could have been the kids that were shot?

GEORGE: Could have been the kids. I really think that if any kids were out there, she would have done it for anyone's kids.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: Six people were killed. Eight people were shot altogether. It is sickening to think that there could have been even more victims -- Poppy?

HARLOW: Nick Valencia. Nick, thank you.

Ahead, just moments from now, dueling rallies just hours before voters head to caucus in Nevada and make their choice. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, both speak live. You'll hear from them both right here. Also, Dr. Ben Carson joining me to speak about the state of the race

and also why he said President Obama was, quote, "raised white," next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)