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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Obama's Foreign Policy Problem; "Worst Week" Since Ebola Outbreak Began; Google Enters The Drone War

Aired August 29, 2014 - 16:30   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Continuing with our world lead, ISIS, even supporters of President Obama seemed somewhat caught off guard by his statement yesterday that there is no strategy yet for airstrikes targeting ISIS militants in Syria.

And regardless of the spin being put on what many describe as a gaffe, today, President Obama's words seemed to have bolstered what many critics have been saying all along about the Obama administration and its inaction against a growing global threat.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER (voice-over): They're a terror group with big ambitions. ISIS has taken cities in Iraq and Syria and even killed an American citizen. In response today, the United Kingdom elevated its terror threat level from substantial to severe.

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: We cannot appease this ideology. We have to confront it at home and abroad. We need a firm security response whether that is action to go after the terrorists, international cooperation on intelligence, and kinds of terrorism or uncompromising measures against terrorists here at home.

TAPPER: To his critiques, British Prime Minister David Cameron's announcement today seemed a stark contrast to the message conveyed by President Obama Thursday when asked about attacking ISIS in Syria.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't want to put the cart before the horse, we don't have a strategy yet.

TAPPER: Critics say those comments seemed hardly reassuring, comments that required his press secretary to engage in some clean-up.

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We do have a comprehensive strategy for dealing with ISIL. What the president is still waiting on are some military options that are being developed by the professionals at the Department of Defense.

TAPPER: To President Obama's critics the comments symbolized their larger issues with the president's leadership on the world stage.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: We got so scared off by what happened in Vietnam we were unable to use power wisely in many of the years that followed. Now we've got an Iraq syndrome where there's a reluctance to think concretely and coherently and comprehensively about how power, what power should be brought to bear.

TAPPER: Even some Democrats privately say they cannot recall a president who spends so much time announcing what he is not willing to do in the name of protecting the U.S. and its allies.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: We are not taking military action to solve the Ukrainian problem.

TAPPER: This and a less engaged U.S., the president's critics say, leaves a vacuum, particularly in the Middle East. While it's true that the U.S. is engaged in humanitarian missions and bombing ISIS in Iraq, the president suggested the goal so far of that mission is not to defeat ISIS.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Our focus right now is to protect American personnel on the ground in Iraq, to protect our embassy, to protect our consulates. To make sure that critical infrastructure that could adversely affect our personnel is protected.

TAPPER: And that perceived vacuum can spill over into other areas, as well.

BARRY PAVAL, ATLANTIC COUNCIL: There is a perception that the U.S. has the capability to deal militarily with the security challenges that seemed to be proliferating, but that we lack the will.

TAPPER: Most recently, the UAE and Egypt teamed up to take military action against extremists in Libya. Convinced the U.S. would not do it, those two countries did not tell the U.S. about their operation.

Israel and Egypt took actions against Hamas in Gaza without U.S. involvement. Russian President Vladimir Putin has annexed Crimea from Ukraine and despite his adamant denials, he now seems determined to grab the rest.

The president's defenders see this all quiet differently, pointing out that Putin annexed part of Georgia during the George W. Bush years.

SENATOR JACK REED (D), RHODE ISLAND: We don't want to replicate some of the mistakes we made in 2002 and 2003 when we made assumptions we had facts that turned out to be erroneous and then we took military action. We want to be very careful in this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Joining me now is David Rothkopf, he is CEO and editor-at- large of "Foreign Policy" magazine. David, good to see you as always. What was your reaction to the president's remarks yesterday specifically saying that there's no strategy for ISIS in Syria?

DAVID ROTHKOPF, CEO AND EDITOR-AT-LARGE, "FOREIGN POLICY" MAGAZINE: I was disappointed, but I wasn't surprised. We don't seem to have a strategy to deal with most of the issues. The president seems to want to lean away, not get involved. Get out of places where we have been involved. And as a result, whether it's Ukraine or Syria, whether it's Iraq, whether it's Afghanistan, whether it's Libya, we right now are reacting. We're back on our heels and that's how you end up with statements like the one you ended up with yesterday.

TAPPER: You wrote something fairly scathing about the administration's handling of the ISIS threat. Quote, "There are no risk-free initiatives. Indeed if this recent period of flying without a flight plan reveals anything, it is that the search for risk-free options may be among the most dangerous paths to choose of all."

So you think that we should have a comprehensive strategy to go after ISIS and we should be doing it and not just focused on as President Obama put it, just trying to protect our folks in Northern Iraq? This should be a bigger campaign?

ROTHKOPF: I think that's definitely the case and what's more, I think there's a real opportunity to do that. First of all, the extremist threat isn't just ISIS. It's Hamas. It's Al-Sharia and other groups in Libya. It extends right across the globe, Boko Haram in Nigeria.

The Chinese themselves are worried about it. What that creates is an opportunity to work with those countries that are frightened or concerned by this, whether it's our traditional gulf allies with Israel, China, even Russia, all share an interest in containing this threat.

So this is a moment where the White House can step up, put together a coalition, use force where force is necessary, but also move forward to creating political alternatives to these groups which is just as important.

TAPPER: But you saw what happened when a year ago, the president made an effort to get an international coalition to go after Assad and that didn't work. I don't know how much willingness there is among other countries, certainly Europe is not willing to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to sanctions against Putin in Russia.

ROTHKOPF: I don't think everybody is going to be willing to step up. But look, you in your intro talked about Egypt and the UAE taking steps against Libya. That's precisely what we asked for.

Yet, once they took action, the White House perhaps fearing like they were flat footed themselves, criticized them for doing precisely what we wanted. There are plenty of countries willing to step up and help, but also there's the issue of leadership.

Sometimes when the rest of the world doesn't want to go along, the president of the United States is in a unique position to motivate them if he has the will to do so.

And what we've not seen from this president in any of these situations is him investing his own political capital in making change happen. That's what people are looking for. That's what we need a president for in situations like this.

TAPPER: David Rothkopf, thank you so much. Appreciate it as always.

Coming up on THE LEAD, an experimental drug might be strong enough to beat back Ebola, but as the virus ravages Africa, can it stopped before it jumps to American shores?

And later, Google wants Amazon to know anything it can do, they'll try to do better. Google getting into the delivery drone wars now coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. In other world news, the Ebola outbreak that has claimed the lives of more than 1,500 people prompted one country to take a drastic measure to protect its citizens, going so far as to shut down one of its borders.

But that, even that was not enough to stop the spread of the deadly disease. Health officials in Senegal confirmed the country's first case. That makes it the fifth country directly impacted by the outbreak.

More than 500 new cases were reported this week alone, making it the worse week since the outbreak began. That brings the total number of cases to more than 3,000. It shows no signs of slowing down.

Joining me now is Dr. Anthony Fauci, he is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Fauci, good to see you as always.

Ebola has now spread to a fifth country. Has the international health community, do you think, been too slow to respond to this threat?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: No, I don't think it's been too slow. I think that the situation has really overwhelming because it's taking place in countries that don't have the infrastructure to be able to deal with it.

And the things that you need to contain it, the isolation capability, the contact tracing, the quarantine, the actual equipment personal protective equipment these are things that certainly need now to be escalated up. The effort has to be ratcheted up at a much, much higher level because the situation there is really extremely serious.

TAPPER: We know that several experimental drugs are being tested to deal with Ebola potentially. How close is the medical community to arriving at something that can be used en masse to combat this outbreak?

FAUCI: Well, I wouldn't say close enough that there's going to be an immediate effect, Jake. For example, as you probably heard, the day after Labor Day, we're going to be putting the first vaccine in an early trial into humans, one that can looked really very good in a monkey model in protecting monkeys from lethal challenge with Ebola.

But in order to really deploy something like that, you have to show that it's safe first, that it induces the kind of immune response and that ultimately will be effective. This is going to take at a minimum to just show that it's safe enough to give to people a few months.

We won't know that until the end of the year and then you can think in terms of maybe doing a clinical trial where you can show the efficacy with regard to drugs for people who are already infected, a lot of these are maybe three or four candidates that are in the preclinical stage meaning they've been shown to be pretty good in animals.

They've got to get tested at least minimally to show they're safe and to get the right dose. What we're talking about is a number of candidates that are lined up, but they're not going to have an immediate impact.

That's why we all in the public health sector emphasize that the way now to try and stop this outbreak, this serious outbreak is by just amplifying and scaling up the public health measures of infection control.

That's what we have right now and we've proven in smaller outbreaks that that worked. So although we're working extremely intensively on developing drugs and vaccines, that's not going to do anything in the immediate future. We've got to do the infection control.

TAPPER: And how likely do you think it is that this it is going to spread beyond Africa?

FAUCI: Well, it certainly is feasible as we've already seen over the last several weeks how it's unrolled that neighboring countries are at risk. Neighboring countries within that African region.

As far as a patient getting to a developed nation that has good healthcare capabilities, I would not be surprised that someone who got infected in a West African country did know that they were infected, got on a plane and landed in a developed nation.

Be it the United States or the U.K. or the Europe and then got sick in there and may have even infected a person or a couple of people. But the health care capabilities in those countries, Jake, are such that it is extraordinarily unlikely that you'll see the explosive outbreak that you're seeing now because there are well tested ways to contain this.

If you have the good hospital capabilities, good contact tracing, you can contain it. So I wouldn't want anybody to think you might not have a case or two outside of Africa, but it is extremely unlikely that will explode into the outbreak we're seeing now.

TAPPER: Dr. Fauci, thank you so much.

FAUCI: You're quite welcome.

TAPPER: Up next on THE LEAD, he was caught on tape pointing a gun at Ferguson protesters threatening to kill him. Now that officer is out of a job. He's not the only one. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Time now for the Money Lead. The search engine company so powerful it has become a verb, Google, extends far beyond auto completing your queries for grumpy cat names. Google has changed the way we e-mail, the way we watch videos.

The way we drive around town and now Google wants to change the way we get packages. Google X, the company's Darpa-like research arm unveiled a drone in a video on YouTube, the five-foot wide single wing planes have been undergoing test flights since last year.

Google says they hope the drones will be nothing short of a history- changing innovation. Can they live up to the aspirations? Joining me now with more on the story is our Athena Jones.

Athena, Google has been working on developing a drone for quite some time. Apparently we just didn't know about it until right now.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jake. The folks at Google X have been working on this for two years. They're a super secretive bunch, the people behind the self-driving cars and Google Glass.

The reporter we spoke to said you can't even go to the restroom at their facility in Mountain View, California, without being escorted all the way there. Now this team has been working on something that they hope will change the way society works.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONES (voice-over): Hear that? It's the building buzz of potential business by drone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some dog food for my dogs, please.

JONES: And now backed by a rock tune riff, Google announced its latest aspiration, a drone delivery service for anything from dog treats to first aid kits.

ASTRO TELER, CAPTAIN OF MOONSHOTS, GOOGLE(X): Project Wing, aspires to take another big chunk of the remaining friction out of moving things around in the world.

JONES: Moving things around namely products to paying customers is something companies like Google are looking to streamline. It might seem like a strange move for Google, which has built its empire around searches, maps and advertising.

ALEXIS MADRIGAL, "THE ATLANTIC": What they want to do is have the world work more like the internet, right? They want all these little autonomous pieces working on your behalf.

JONES: Google is no stranger to innovation and expansion, like its driverless car prototype. "The Atlantic's" Alexis Madrigal was given exclusive access to the Google team behind the secretive drone project. He says Google wants to transform the world, quickly delivering medical supplies and other goods to people in hard to reach places.

MADRIGAL: The postal service changed society. FedEx overnight delivery changed society. Same-day deliver changed society. So don't we think being able to get you a package in 2 minutes would also change society?

JONES: This time Google is actually a bit behind. Amazon introduced their prototype last December. And Dominos Pizza tried their own Domi-copter drone in June of 2013. The Coast Guard already uses drones for surveillance on ice sheets in Alaska.

Real estate agents are using them to show homes and they were even used to survey the damage after an earthquake struck Napa, California, this month. But widespread use is likely years away and a slew of important safety, privacy and technical issues have to be addressed first.

The Federal Aviation Administration is set to draw up rules to integrate drones into the national air space by September 2015. Perhaps that's one reason Google tested its system in Australia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JONES: Another big question here, Jake, is are we ready for this? Privacy and safety issues aside and those are numerous. Are we looking at a future where delivery truck drivers won't have jobs and we'll have thousands of drones flying around our cities? That's something a lot of people may find hard to imagine. Other people say, bring it on.

TAPPER: A lot of potential questions and problems there. Athena Jones, thank you so much.

In national news, our coverage from Ferguson showed stunning images of police clad in Kevlar holding semi-automatic rifles, cracking down on protesters. Now two officers involved in the police response are out of a job.

Lieutenant Ray Albers, a 20-year veteran of the St. Ann Missouri Police Force gave back his badge and his gun after a video showed him aiming an assault rifle at protesters as he shouted at them, "I will kill you."

The city of Glendale, Missouri, also dismissed Officer Matthew Papert. Papert wrote on Facebook in the middle of the chaos that, quote, "These protesters should have been put down like a rabid dog the first night."

The nation reacted in horror when it learned about the tragic accident Monday at a gun range in Arizona. Now the victim's family is reaching out to the young girl, who lost control of her weapon.

As we reported a 9-year-old girl accidentally shot her instructor while she was learning how to shoot an Uzi submachine gun set on fully automatic. That instructor, Charles Vacca, suffered a gunshot to the head and died. Today they told her they want to know they do not blame her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASHLEY VACCA, CHARLES VACCA'S DAUGHTER: He was a good person. We know they are, as well. We want to make sure we understand we know it was a tragic accident and that it's something that we're all going to have to live with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Vacca's daughter, Ashley also says she plans on writing a letter to the little girl and her family.

Our Sports Lead, Roger Goodell says he messed up. The NFL commissioner announced the league is changing its code of conduct policy regarding domestic violence. Every player, referee, broadcaster, ball boy, anyone who commits an assault will be suspended for six games without pay.

The punishment if they do it again, a lifetime ban. While Goodell admitted he, quote, "didn't get it right the first time" and the NFL has to do better, two words he did not say in that statement, Ray Rice.

We cannot show you the video but Rice, the Ravens all pro running back was caught by security cameras dragging his then fiancee, now wife, who was unconscious out of a casino elevator. Rice was arrested at the time, but he never faced prosecution. The league suspended Rice for a mere two games over the incident, two games.

Meanwhile, Josh Gordon, a wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns will miss the entire upcoming season after he was suspended for violating the league's substance abuse policy by smoking marijuana. Whole season for marijuana.

That's it for THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. I turn you over to Brianna Keilar. She is filling in for Wolf Blitzer. She is right next door in "THE SITUATION ROOM."