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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Less Than Eight Hours to Avoid Government Shutdown; 400,000 Rape Kits Untested; Sony Emails Joke About Obama and Race; USAID Fails to Infiltrate Cuban Hip-Hop Scene; The Battle for T-Rex

Aired December 11, 2014 - 16:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. The Politics Lead now, there are literally just hours left to pass a spending bill that would avoid a government shutdown. A $1.1 trillion compromise deal in the House appears to be in serious trouble.

Usually the fight is between House Republicans and Senate Democrats, but this battle is different. In fact, things have gotten so weird today. We witnessed a Senate Democrat making an impassioned appeal to Tea Party Republicans to reject the compromise bill.

Let's go live now to CNN congressional correspondent, Dana Bash. Dana, a compromised bill will never make members of both parties happy. What is it about this one, though, that's causing so much resistance?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are a couple of issues. But first, if you kind of look at the big picture, you're right. This is bizarre world. I mean, you never really thought it was going to get even more weird than it has over the past couple of years.

But as we speak, we are in a holding pattern because the president, the vice president at the behest of House Republican leaders are calling rank and file Democrats to try to get this passed.

And the reason is because you have such staunch opposition on both wings of the parties, conservatives and liberals. For liberals, it is about a Wall Street rollback, a reform rollback, about campaign finance changes.

And for conservatives it's about the fact that they are not doing enough to stop the president on immigration. Listen to some of what we heard today on Capitol Hill and at the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm here to ask my Republican colleagues who don't want to see another Wall Street bailout to join in our efforts to strip this Wall Street giveaway from the bill.

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: We've done this in a bipartisan fashion and, frankly, it's a good bill. JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president does believe that this compromised proposal is worthy of support.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So there you understand what I was saying, Jake, it's sort of bizarre world. We don't know how this is going to end. Again, this vote was supposed to happen several hours ago. House Republicans put the House floor in recess subject to the call of the chair, which is an uh-oh moment.

It's when you know that they are trying to get the votes and figure out what to do. Republican sources who we are talking to say that they do intend to have a vote by the end of the day, but they might not.

Now if they can't get this vote on this massive bill to fund the government through the year, they are not going to let the government shut down. They do have a back-up plan to fund the government for a few months until Republicans take over next year and the Senate would likely take that up as soon as today or tomorrow -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Dana Bash, thank you so much.

Right now, this budget battle is holding up funding that could help put away criminals responsible for literally hundreds of thousands of rapes and potentially save countless more potential victims.

Because right now across this country, there's an estimated 400,000 rape kits just sitting there untested because police departments say they do not have the money for pricey DNA testing.

Right now, the funds to potentially fix this backlog are stuck in Congress while victims wait and sexual predators walk the streets. It is a frustrating and infuriating example of how Congress was continually walking by and is the latest installment of our ongoing series, "Why Won't Washington Work?"

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I will sentence you to 40 to 75 years to the Department of Corrections.

TAPPER: This serial rapist, Michael Eugune Swygart, was just sentenced to prison for sex crimes, but he could have been caught decades ago if DNA from a 1988 rape had been tested sooner.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have demonstrated a pattern of identifying, targeting vulnerable young women.

TAPPER: Think of all the more recent victims that could have been protected.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When he threw me on the bed and he was raping me, my son had a plastic bag and was hitting him. TAPPER: Swygard's DNA was found in at least 1 of 11,000 untested rape kits in Detroit. Nationwide, experts estimate up to 400,000 reported rapes, some decades old, likely remain unsolved because rape kits like this one have not been processed, largely due to the high cost of pursing DNA evidence.

SARAH TOTTE, VP, POLICY AND ADVOCACY, THE JOYFUL HEART FOUNDATION: This is a problem for everyone and for every community.

TAPPER: For years, advocacy groups such as the Joyful Heart Foundation have been pushing for federal money to help cities end the backlog.

TOTTE: Each day that goes by where they cannot test their kits or investigate their leads means they are losing out on the opportunity and ability to hold the offenders accountable.

TAPPER: Finally, this year, a glimmer of hope, a $41 million bill to fund rape kit testing passed the House and reached the Senate floor in June.

SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MINORITY LEADER: The only restrictions on amendments to this bill are those in the standing rules of Senate.

TAPPER: The $41 million was included as part of a larger, $180 billion spending bill.

MCCONNELL: Why don't we start legislating again?

TAPPER: But the rape kit relief funds fell victim to the U.S. Senate's quicksand of dysfunction with both sides sniping about amendments and vote thresholds and no discussion of justice for rape victims, the spending bill was pulled.

SENATOR HARRY REID (D), MAJORITY LEADER: This is the way the Senate operates now. I wish it didn't, but it does.

TAPPER: The Detroit county prosecutor has made it her mission to clear her city's backlog of 11,000 untested rape kits. In the first 1,600 she had tested, she found 127 serial rapists, Swigart being one of them.

KYM WORTHY, WAYNE COUNTY PROSECUTOR: These rapists from the 1600 that we had tested over the last 15 years have gone on to rape in more than half of the states in the United States and District of Columbia. That's how pervasive this problem is in one city in one county in one state in the United States.

TAPPER: This week, the funding got another chance this time as part of a $1.1 trillion spending bill.

BOEHNER: Redundancy in a bipartisan fashion, frankly it's a good bill.

REPRESENTATIVE STEVE ISRAEL (D), NEW YORK: I'm just not going to vote for it. At this point, I don't see many Democratic votes at all. TAPPER: At this hour, it's unclear that the spending bill will successfully get through Congress and if it does not, this crucial funding will be delayed yet again. Either way, it should have passed months ago.

TOTTE: It's come down to who has control over the bill and those are the leaders of the Senate and that's who we need to act right now.

TAPPER: To these prosecutors and activists, congressional gridlock is not just a journalistic cliche or a campaign complaint. It is pernicious.

WORTHY: There is no reason why it should be so hard to prosecute violent crime against women. I will never understand that. What you're saying is a whole population, mostly women, their lives don't matter and their cases don't matter. I don't understand that at all.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: There have been other DNA tests processing funds passed in the Senate, but those are not target expressly at ending the rape kit backlog. We will wait to see what spending bill ultimately passes the House and the Senate and gets to the president's desk, if any desk.

Coming up, the personal e-mails about President Obama that you were not supposed to see. Now her public and a big-time Hollywood producer is apologizing. That's next.

Plus, did you know that there's an underground hip-hop scene in Cuba? Well, there is and the U.S. government reportedly thought it could infiltrate it and spark a movement to overthrow the Castro government.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. The MONEY LEAD now, the hack on Sony Pictures has gone from bizarre to potentially damaging for the Sony brand now that leaked e-mails have revealed a racially tinge exchange between a Sony executive and Oscar-winning producer, Scott Rudin about President Obama.

E-mails surfaced this week that show the exchange between Rodent and Sony co-chair, Amy Pascal. Pascal asked Rudin what she should talk to Obama in a 2013 fundraiser writing, quote, "Should I ask him if he liked "Django."

Rudin replies "12 years." Referencing the movie, "12 Years of Slave," get it. The exchange is of course meant to imply that the president likes African-American films. Pascal and Rudin have both issued apologies in the wake of the leak, calling their remakes insensitive.

With the storm of the century bearing down on the bay area, stranded passengers at San Francisco International Airport may be in for a long hungry wait. Why you ask?

Because nearly 1,000 restaurant employees walked off the job yesterday, for 48 hours, protesting a proposal that would increase their health care payments for as much as $4200 a year.

The union representing the workers is urging anyone flying out of San Francisco to bring their own food. A spokesman said that is not necessary. There are concession stands and retail stores still open for business.

We live in a time when the right filter can make any of us look as if we have a clue of what to do with a camera, but there is not a single Instagram hack that can make your vacation snaps as impressive as this.

This photograph, taken by amateur photographer, Peter Lick entitled "phantom." He has now sold to an anonymous buyer for a record $6.5 million. Lick has now sold four of the top 20 most expensive photographs ever.

But not everybody is in agreement about the image's value in an online posting, one observer said, quote, "Wow, what an incredible waste of money. Just another example that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder."

Now for our Pop Culture Lead today, or in the hip pop lead, in the famous words of the Eminem, if you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you wanted, would you capture it or let it slip?

If you're the U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID and that opportunity was infiltrating the Cuban hip-hop scene, the answer is let it slip or more like let it fumble.

According to the "Associated Press," the U.S. agency spent more than two years trying to break into the world of Cuban hip-hop with the hope of starting a youth revolt against the Castro government.

Not only did the undercover plot not yield results and force some artists to move out of Cuba and threaten the country's thriving hip- hop scene. As it turns out, this is not the first time the USAID has tried and failed to rally Cuba's youth against the communist regime.

Joining me now from Havana, Cuba, is CNN's Lonzo Cook. Lonzo, thanks for being with us. How exactly was this supposed to work?

LONZO COOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, the plan was for contractors working for USAID to recruit Cuban musicians for extensively cultural initiatives, but really use these as a way to build their own profile and to foment descent as the government.

The idea is that was to infiltrate the underground hip-hop scene and to build up the profile of this band and use them as a kernel, if you will, to start a mass youth opposition movement to the government -- Jake.

TAPPER: I believe this is not the first time that the USAID has tried to use culture to infiltrate the government. What are some other examples and what's the agency's response to this?

COOK: Well, just earlier this year, the press revealed an extensive program organized through a USAID contract absolutely no irony at all in that title, which received millions of dollars and had two main programs.

One was an attempt to set up a Cuban version of Twitter to evade what the U.S. calls an information blockade inside this Caribbean nation. That was not a success.

The second, however, was a little more troubling, which involved third-party nationals from Latin America, who were encouraged in their meetings with Cuban students while attending meetings at Cuban universities.

Now, the USAID in responding to the latest report from the Associated Press about this hip-hop infiltration program said -- claimed that their programs were neither clan destine nor covert.

They said the real issue -- first of all, they claimed that "AP" misrepresented what was going on with their program and said the real issue is the harassment of Cubans who are not able to lead free lives.

The USAID goes on to claim that their programs are designed to support civil society in all its facets. Clearly, the ineffectiveness of these three programs and the comic nature of it -- if you will, this is a modern analogy of the exploding cigar, not to mention the -- is this a good use of U.S. taxpayer money -- Jake.

TAPPER: Lonzo Cook, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Wolf Blitzer is here with the preview of "THE SITUATION ROOM." Wolf, you're delving into the CIA torture report with Congressman Mike Rogers, who is the outgoing House Intelligence Committee chairman and also with a former CIA spokesperson.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": Mike Rogers is leaving Congress. He is giving up his position as chair of the House Intelligence Committee. He was with Candy Crowley last Sunday. He said there would be violence and deaths of Americans as a result of the release of this report. We're going to follow up with him on that.

Bill Harlow, who is the spokesman for the CIA when George Tenna was the CIA director during 9/11 and the years that followed. We're going to have an extensive conversation with him as well. We're getting reaction to the extraordinary news conference that you and I covered at the CIA director, John Brennan.

TAPPER: All right, Wolf Blitzer, that's coming up in 8 minutes. Thanks so much.

In our Buried Lead, almost an entire T-rex skeleton unearthed here in the U.S., but the story doesn't end there. How one man involved in the discovery ended up in prison. That's next.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. It took some diggings to get our Buried Lead today. Scientists this week just unveiled what could be the oldest dinosaur bones in North America.

Check out the fossils, hooked beak and high cheekbones. Scientists found these in Montana almost 20 years ago, but they just pieced together their origins. This is not a giant creature. Instead scientists say it was only about 2 feet long and weighed 3 pounds.

Tonight, in a new CNN film, we will profile another discovery. One man spent his entire career searching for the tyrannosaurus only to have the most complete skeleton ever found stripped from him by the government.

CNN correspondent, Poppy Harlow, is live at the Field Museum in Chicago in front of Sue, as the T-rex is fondly known. Poppy, what makes this is so extraordinary?

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, first, the enormity. I mean, look at the scale of this, 42 feet long, the bones alone weigh 4,000 pounds, Jake. When you talk about Sue, she's not only the most complete T-Rex ever found anywhere in world history at 90 percent complete, she's the largest so scientists have learned so much from her.

You have 60 million people who have come here to see Sue here at the Field Museum. What is also extraordinary is the story about how she got here and that is the fact that these paleontologists found her in the hills of South Dakota and unearthed her.

Only to have the feds raid the Black Hills Institute where she was, take her away. She was in storage for seven years while the legal battle unfolded between the parties. Ultimately it was decided that the folks, Jake, that found Sue didn't own her.

It was on federal land owned by somebody else. She was auctioned off here to the Field Museum, and $8.4 million is what she went for. It's an extraordinary story about an extraordinary fossil and that's what being documented tonight in a movie on CNN, Jake. But it has a lot of twists and turns, I will tell you that.

TAPPER: And Poppy, Peter Larson, who is the paleontologist here, he spent time behind bars over his fossil collection?

HARLOW: It's incredible, right? So you had the civil case over who owns Sue and that ultimately ended not in Peter Larson's favor, not in the South Dakota Black Hills Institute's favor. They lost her and ultimately she went here to the Field Museum.

But then you had the U.S. attorney at that time, Jake, who brought this criminal case against Peter Larson for his other fossil- collecting activities and ultimately he was charged, he was found guilty of customs fraud and he did, he landed in federal prison.

For how long, how did this unfold? What do the jurors have to say now? That's part of the documentary tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN. I knew nothing about the story of Sue. It is absolutely fascinating. TAPPER: All right, Poppy Harlow, we will be watching. Catch the premier of "Dinosaur 13," tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

Look at this video of Sue being created. That's fascinating stuff. Follow me on Twitter @jaketapper and also @theleadcnn. Check out our show page at CNN.com/thelead for video, blogs, for extras.

You can also, of course, subscribe to our magazine on Flipboard. That is it for THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. I now turn you over to the one, Mr. Wolf Blitzer. He is right next door in "THE SITUATION ROOM" -- Wolf.