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End of Brennan Briefing; Analysis of John Brennan's Speech; Last Minute Bill to Fund Government; Mothers against Police Brutality's Organizer Demands Police Reform

Aired December 11, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

JOHN BRENNAN, CIA DIRECTOR: It was one of the things that the WMD commission encouraged there to be a diversity of views within the intelligence community. So there wouldn't be single group thing. And so, there have been a lot of studies done over the years about the value of different types of interrogation methods and whether or not coercive methods can lead to useful information that couldn't be otherwise obtained. I tend to believe that the use of coercive methods has a strong prospect for resulting in false information because if somebody is being subjected to a course of techniques, they may say something to have those techniques stopped and I think this agency has said that individuals who are subjected to those techniques here provided useful information as well as false information. And as our experts try to pore through a lot of data and information, that job is made more challenging if you get more false information. Thank you.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: So spending about 45 minutes before the news media out at Langley, Virginia, the CIA Director John Brennan making a very strong case. Yes, the CIA made several major mistakes, but on the whole the CIA should be praised. The CIA Director John Brennan saying that, yes, the process was flawed. There were mistakes but they defended the overwhelming majority of the CIA personnel for doing the right thing in the days, weeks, months, years after 9/11.

We want to welcome back our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Let's get some serious analysis of what's going on. First of all, Jake Tapper, what's your bottom line reaction when you heard what the CIA director had to say?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's interesting. When you talk to CIA officials and CIA analysts about the torture program, the enhanced interrogation program, they say nothing is as clear cut as the media and perhaps even the public want it to be. Everything is very murky. There's a lot of ambivalence. You can't say you waterboard this guy and he gives you this information, ticking time bomb, the terrorist act is prevented. It's all a lot more complicated than that. It's little bits of information here and there.

And you get a sense of that murkiness and a sense of that ambivalence from Director Brennan's remarks. One of the things he said was he said it was unknowable if any of the information gained from using these brutal techniques could have come from using non-brutal techniques. In fact, David Petraeus, the former CIA director is quoted in "The Wall Street Journal" just a few minutes ago saying he told a conference in Rotterdam "If you want information from a detainee, you become his best friend." That is another theory of having best information. But in any case, so he was saying it's unknowable. That doesn't mean that they then support the idea of using EITs unnecessarily, or torture.

But it is very, very complicated and you can see why they don't put Brennan out there to explain these things very often. He doesn't speak in terms of right and wrong. He speaks in terms of the messy business of acquiring intelligence.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think Brennan was also trying to really rally the troops here. Because he, you know, he made the case very strongly that the CIA does not intentionally mislead the Congress, which is a case Dianne Feinstein says very definitively, we were intentionally misled. We were uninformed.

He also made the case these were a group of -- he didn't use the word rogue. My word rogue. Folks that did the torture and that this is not the way the CIA comports itself and he also admitted, quite frankly, that this was an agency post- 9/11 in his introduction that was unprepared for detainees and for interrogation and so he made it sort of clear like they were trying to find their way as they were doing this. But there is now a big difference and a big question because, Wolf, you pointed out some tweets from Dianne Feinstein or her staff, during that ...

TAPPER: Live tweeting.

BORGER: Live tweeting, you know, effectively saying that in fact the CIA ...

BLITZER: Let me read that - Let me read some of these tweets from Dianne Feinstein. "Covert authority did not include authorization to use coercive interrogation techniques."

BORGER: Right.

BLITZER: Another tweet, "coercive interrogation techniques don't work. Traditional intelligence collection, interrogation and law enforcement do." Let me read a third one. She said, "Executive summary backed up by 6700 page classified report, 38,000 footnotes, every fact based on CIA record, cables, et cetera, CIA says unknowable. If we could have gotten the intelligence other ways, studies shows it is knowable. CIA had info before torture."

Let me bring in Jeremy Bash. He worked at the CIA, or actually we don't have Jeremy Bash, but we do have Bob Baer who is joining us who worked inside the CIA.

This whole issue of what's knowable, unknowable. For example, let me play a little clip of what John Brennan said about the capture, the killing of Osama bin Laden. Whether or not the enhanced interrogation techniques, which so many people call torture played a role in that. Listen to this, Bob.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRENNAN: It is our considered view that the detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques provided information that was useful and was used in the ultimate operation to go against bin Laden. Again, intelligence information from the individuals who were subjected to EITs provided information that was used in that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Because the argument that you get from the Senate Intelligence Committee, at least the majority Dianne Feinstein and her colleagues there, the Democratic colleagues, is that the EITs, the enhanced interrogation techniques, really didn't play a role in the killing of bin Laden.

BOB BAER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, Wolf, I think he's backed away from the whole argument for torture that it's effective. He said it was used. What does that mean? It doesn't mean anything at all. I mean it was in context it may have been helpful. It may have disproved something. I think he didn't make a very strong case that this was justified using torture all these, you know, those five years and I think it was an extraordinarily honest speech in that sense and he's essentially apologized for that - for those five years where we did use torture.

You know, I think that he's taking the same line as the president that it's ambivalent whether this stuff really worked or not and there's no point in going back to it, and he did admit the CIA made big mistakes. Which is good. We are getting - we need to do this to get over this.

BLITZER: Paul Cruikshank, there are people all around the world who've watching the CIA Director John Brennan make that speech. A 20- minute speech followed by extensive Q & A with reporters there in Langley, Virginia at CIA headquarters. And you monitor these jihadi websites. How are they likely to be impacted, if at all, by what we heard from the CIA director?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: I don't think there is going to be a huge impact. There's been a pretty muted response in the Middle East, a pretty muted response on these jihadi websites and social media. There have been some calls by English speaking radicals for retaliation. Those are Canadian ISIS fighter that called for the psychologist allegedly involved in the program to be beheaded. But by and large, this is sort of being met with indifference. It's old news. These people already have a very dark view of the United States. And there's some other controversies in the past which have created riots and attacks. But I don't think this is likely necessarily to be one of them.

BLITZER: Josh, I want you to just react - I want to play a little clip. This is John Brennan acknowledging that the CIA did make some major mistakes. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRENNAN: There were times when CIA officers exceeded the policy guidance that was given and the authorized techniques that were approved and determined to be lawful. They went outside of the bounds in terms of their actions as part of that interrogation process. And they were harsh. As I said in some instances I consider them abhorrent and I will leave to others how they might want to label those activities. But for me it was something that is certainly regrettable but we are not a perfect institution. We're made up of individuals and as human beings we're imperfect beings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: He used the word abhorrent. Obviously, a very, very strong word in describing some of the mistakes that CIA officials made. But he was quick to point out that the Justice Department has investigated and there will be no criminal investigation, no criminal prosecution of any U.S. officials who were engaged in this process. Were you surprised to hear that?

JOSH ROGIN, BLOOMBERG VIEW COLUMNIST: I was not surprised that the director decided not to use the word torture. He did not go further than he did in his statement, which was issued a couple of days ago in the report's release. What he failed to talk about, which is what a lot of lawmakers, especially Senator Ron Wyden, have focused on is the CIA's role in choosing the people who ran and orchestrated this program. Some $80 million spent on contractors. These contractors according to the report had no experience in interrogations. They were actually experienced in resisting interrogations, which is not the same thing.

So the director here is trying to portray these as isolated incidents rather than the fault of the CIA leadership for setting up this program in the first place and secondly, what he also fails to discuss is his own personal role. He says that he wasn't a major part of this program, but he was aware of it. My committee sources tell me that in the classified version of this report, there's a lot of evidence about what John Brennan knew, what he said, and what he wrote to people about this program when he was a senior official during the program's implementation. I think if John Brennan wants to move on as he said in his speech today, a lot of these questions will have to be answered.

BLITZER: Before the news conference, the White House issued a strong statement of support for John Brennan. We heard it from Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. Michelle Kosinski is our White House correspondent. Are you getting any reaction over there, Michelle, yet? I know it's only been a few moments since the news conference. What were you hearing during the course of his opening statement and his Q & A?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, on the couple of points, I mean we didn't know at the time that we were questioning the White House press secretary what the director would say exactly, but we know from the CIA statement this week, the strong statement, really a rebuttal to the report in many ways. I mean strongly stating that usable intel did come as a result of these methods leading to saving lives. The killing of Osama bin Laden. Stating that in no uncertain terms. What we've heard the White House saying over the past few days is they will not agree with Brennan's statement on that. They won't even weigh in on whether they feel he is correct that intel came out of that. When asked, though, well, do you have any reason to disagree with Brennan or any reason to believe that he would not be truthful in that, the White House did concede no.

Today, though, we see this alignment. We know that Brennan met with the president this morning. Now we hear Brennan saying what the White House has been saying. That it is ultimately unknowable whether that intel could have come from other methods. So, apparently, that meeting this morning worked. We're not seeing this kind of uncomfortable rift between what Brennan has been saying and what the White House would not say, but at least there's this coming together on what Brennan is now conceding that, well, it's impossible to truly know whether that intel could have been obtained through other legal means, Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Good point. Jake Tapper, button this all up for us.

TAPPER: Well, I just want to say that, you know, breaking news politicians use slippery words and people who are in positions like Brennan's - Brennan is often use words very cleverly as well. For instance, he used to say that the drone campaign never killed any innocent people and that's because they defined anybody who was a fighting age male as automatically guilty. I think we heard some of that today as well when he was talking about whether or not any of the language gained through torture led to the killing of bin Laden. He was very clever in what he said. He said individuals who had been subjected to these techniques as he calls them, gave information that led to the tracking down of bin Laden. That's not to say that the torture itself was responsible. Just that the individuals themselves gave that information and in fact if you look at the timeline, it seems like a lot of that information came before they were subjected to the waterboarding. So, there's going to be some parsing going on that I think will be necessary by the press.

BLITZER: All right. I know you'll have a lot more coming up on "THE LEAD" 4:00 p.m. Eastern. We'll be watching that. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. Eastern in "The Situation Room." Much more coverage coming up. Brooke Baldwin will pick up our special coverage right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, I'm Brooke Baldwin. We'll take it from here. Thank you so much for joining me here. You're watching CNN. We'll begin in Washington, but a much, much different story. We'll have more, of course, on the unprecedented news conference by the CIA director. 45 minutes there John Brennan speaking. In just a moment. But first, another major story developing right now in our nation's capital that involves a big cash grab. True to habit, Congress has failed again this year to pass bills to fund the Pentagon, the Department of Justice, Treasury and EPA. You name it. All of the departments of government. So, here we go. They are doing this on the fly. Last minute. And we all know that can lead to a little trouble. They have stuffed a trillion dollars into a big fat bill they only made public on Tuesday and they are voting on today. How is that for openness? Here's our House Speaker John Boehner on this unusual last-minute bill hijinks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), HOUSE SPEAKER: And I do expect it to pass - What, listen, if we don't get finished today, we're going to be here until Christmas. We all know how this process works.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: If the bill doesn't pass, then we get another government shutdown. So, it's a great time for members to burden taxpayers ALA (ph) you by cramming dubious projects and ill-conceived policies into this bloated bill that again really must pass, and again, was only unveiled this past Tuesday. So, Dana Bash is our chief congressional correspondent and I know she doesn't want to report on another government shutdown. Nor do I. So, what's the situation there right now?

DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, unfortunately we have seen this movie so many times. And at this point the movie is not thank goodness going off the cliff of a government shutdown. But it is -- the House floor on hold. Leadership in both parties held up in their offices trying to find votes. There was supposed to be a vote on that big bill that you just talked about over an hour ago. But instead of holding the vote at that time, they put the House in recess and everybody went behind closed doors to try to figure out if they have the votes and what this is all about is Democrats and Republicans coming together, working together, these negotiators on the spending bill. For months and months and months on a compromise. Not everybody was happy with it.

But as people have read the bill more and more particularly on the Democratic side, they have dropped off, really, in ways that the negotiators didn't expect for lots of reasons, but the biggest are that they fear that there is too much of a reversal of Wall Street reforms and also too much of a change in campaign finance laws allowing wealthy donors to give more money, even more money than before.

So, because of that, the Republicans who are already going to lose conservatives, but thought they could rely on Democrats to pass this, they are not so sure anymore. So, that's why everybody has retreated trying to figure out where the votes are and we're in that kind of oh- oh moment for leaders there that they had to put everything on pause to try to figure that out for us.

BALDWIN: So flash forward for me. I mean are these members of Congress who we elect, will they be doing their jobs? Will this whole thing pass in the end?

BASH: Yes. And here's why. They have a backup plan. They have a backup plan that they already had in motion to pass a short-term bill to keep the government running. Because the clock is literally ticking, the government runs out of money at midnight tonight. So, already they were going to pass this short-term spending bill to make sure that the government doesn't shut down. No aspects of the government shutdown. While even if the House does approve this, it still has got to go over to the Senate and it will probably take them a couple of days to approve. So, that was already in place.

But regardless, this is - you kind of take a step back and look at this, this is maybe an example of bipartisanship working in some ways, compromise, legislating which we haven't seen in a very long time, the art of legislating actually happening here, but the extremes of both parties being so vocal and so powerful, perhaps, taking this down or making it at least, the very least, very, very difficult for compromise and I think it's a case study in why it is so hard to compromise on Capitol Hill.

BALDWIN: Case study. Nevertheless, I like hearing the sides talking and the notion of a backup plan. How about them apples?

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: Dana Bash in Washington, Dana, thank you.

You know, this spending bill, of course, is not the only thing we're watching in Washington today. Soon we will see something of a rarity actually in Washington there on Capitol Hill. A dramatic walkout on the Capitol steps by an estimated 50 congressional staffers. The obvious question why walk out on the job on this extremely busy day in Washington? We will tell you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: But soon there will be a different kind of government walkout. One not for money, but for a cause. Members of the Congressional Black Associates and other Capitol Hill minority groups will walk off the job to show support and solidarity for the families of Eric Garner and Michael Brown and so many other mothers who have lost their young sons and daughters. And joining this group will be my next guest Collette Flanagan, founded Mothers Against Police Brutality. She has been in Washington with other moms whose sons have been killed by police. A Dallas officer killed Flanagan's son Clinton Allen in March of 2013. Allen was 25 and the father of twins. Police say Allen was trying to choke the officer forcing him to shoot Allen seven times. And so Flanagan spoke out Wednesday at a news conference calling for police reform. Here she was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLLETTE FLANAGAN, SON KILLED BY DALLAS POLICE IN 2013: All an officer has to say is that I feared for my life. It's their free get out of jail card. So we have to start asking questions when did you stop fearing for your life. Was it after the first shot? The second shot? The third shot? The fourth shot? The fifth shot? Sixth shot? The seventh shot? When do they stop fearing for their lives?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And Collette Flanagan joins me now live from Washington. Ms. Flanagan, welcome.

FLANAGAN: Thank you so much, Brooke.

BALDWIN: You know, I know you have been speaking out, of course, and calling for change ever since you lost your son in 2013 and now you'll be leaving our Washington bureau heading to the building we see behind you to join members of Congress to walk out, be part of this nationwide movement. Do you truly sense changes in the air?

FLANAGAN: I do. I think that people understand that police brutality is no longer conjecture. People understand that our children are being systematically killed by officers who should not be on police force and that they have protection and impunity and I think the world now sees that this is actually happening, that there are officers that kill our children.

BALDWIN: I so appreciate you speaking about this. But I do have to ask, you know, given all the facts found by police and investigators and also "The Dallas Morning News", you know, specifically saying that that police officer had injuries to his throat, had a concussion, the officer said he felt threatened. Do you see the officer as having any justification for what he did?

FLANAGAN: Absolutely not. This officer - and we encourage mothers to start calling these officers names and that's another form of protection. We say officer. His name is Clark Staller. He's a Dallas police officer who had a trouble and has a troubled history with the Dallas police department who has infractions, shouldn't have never been a police officer. He almost killed someone with his squad car that was fleeing from a scene. He used his car to stop the suspect and injured that person and then he lied and falsified the police report to cover that incident. And so had he not been protected in a culture that breeds policemen bad behavior and murderous acts, had he not been protected, my son may be alive today.

BALDWIN: We talk about behavior. And I read this fascinating column today. It was actually written by 25-year-old African-American police officer. This is writing in the Grio. And actually, I will be talking to him next hour. But this is - right, he's essentially pinning this letter to the black protests we are seeing now. He says, "We must be careful not to create a deeper chasm between communities of color and law enforcement. The historical skepticism that blacks have of law enforcement has merit, but we all have to work together to end institutional racism in America. The continued distrust is hurting us. How many crimes in our communities go unsolved because we rather not snitch or cooperate with police?"

And I'm wondering, Collette, if he has a point. Do you fear all of the protesting and I've seen it screaming at police officers, is that then creating this further divide when we really need the dialogue between community and police?

FLANAGAN: Absolutely. Well, the thing that we have to understand that if you don't have a community's trust, you're not going to solve crimes in any community whether it's black, white or Hispanic. And so when you have a police force that's not reaching out to community leaders, that only wants to hear things that they want to hear, that's not standing with the community like, for instance, in Dallas, it has been 41 years since a police officer -- I said 41 years -- since a police officer has been indicted for shooting and killing an unarmed person and in those communities, we know we call them Dallas hunting grounds. There are certain zip codes, 75216, 75217.

BALDWIN: Right.

FLANAGAN: You know, and 75241. So, if you know you have a concentrated area where your cops are killing our children, why don't you get more diversity? I can write down ...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: That is - that is such a great point about more diversity. It's actually a point this officer makes. We'll talk to him next hour. And Collette Flanagan, we'll be watching for you and members of Congress walking out of Capitol Hill next hour. We'll take it live. Thank you so much. And I'm sorry about your son. Thank you.

FLANAGAN: Thank you so much.

BALDWIN: And a quick, quick programming note for you. If you are fascinated with dinosaurs, then you will love this new CNN film. It's premiering tonight at 9:00 Eastern. It's called "Dinosaur 13" taking you inside the discovery of Sue, the largest most intact Tyrannosaurus Rex ever discovered. Sue is on display in Chicago at the field museum there. There's actually this amazing back story on what it took to get her there. So, do not miss that and don't forget to watch tonight at 9:00 Eastern.

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