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Controversy Continues Over CIA Interrogation Techniques; Northern California Facing Strong Storm; Interview with Republican U.S. Senator Tom Coburn

Aired December 11, 2014 - 08:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Taking on torture, major backlash to the Senate's blistering torture report. Former Vice President Dick Cheney says the report is full of crap while the White House isn't taking a position. Should CIA officials be prosecuted and did the harsh tactics save lives?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And as millions clean up from a massive nor'easter on the east coast, Northern California is bracing for what could be the state's worst storm in a decade. High winds, flooding and the risk of mudslides forcing schools in the bay area to close this morning. Are they ready?

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Spotlight on Hollywood, leaked e-mails from Sony Pictures reveal embarrassing drama pitting studio execs against some of the silver screen's biggest names. Plus, who will get top honors at the Golden Globes this year. We are going to discuss the nominees, the surprises, and the snubs.

CUOMO: Your NEW DAY continues right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Kate Bolduan and Michaela Pereira.

CUOMO: Good morning, welcome back to NEW DAY. It is Thursday, December 11th, just after 8:00 in the east. Chris Cuomo with Alisyn Camerota here.

In the wake of that scathing Senate report on CIA's torture tactics, the Justice Department is declining to prosecute or even investigate. Now, the question is, will the CIA face the firestorm and calls for him to resign?

CAMEROTA: Now, John Brennan has agreed to answer questions at a press conference this afternoon as more lawmakers call for him to step down, accusing him and the agency of lying to the American people. So let's go live to the White House and bring in Jim Acosta. What do we know?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. The White House so far is steering clear of the big questions coming out of that torture report, should CIA officials be prosecuted for those harsh interrogation techniques, and did those techniques even work? But there is one person who is willing to answer those questions -- Dick Cheney.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: With the debate raging over the fallout of the torture report, the White House is staying on the sidelines. Press Secretary Josh Earnest refused to weigh in whether CIA officials should be tried for interrogation tactics the president himself has described as torture.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do those details warrant going back and reexamining whether people should be prosecuted?

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Decisions about prosecution are made by career federal prosecutors at the Department of Justice.

ACOSTA: The Justice Department says the federal prosecutors who looked into the program won't be launching a new investigation based on the report from the Senate Intelligence Committee's Democrat Chair Dianne Feinstein. Trial or no trial, the CIA has some big names coming to its defense, from former vice president Dick Cheney who blasted the report on FOX News.

DICK CHENEY, (R) FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I think it's a terrible piece of work. We did exactly what needed to be done in order to catch those who were guilty on 9/11 and to prevent a further attack, and we were successful on both parts. And I think --

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS HOST: This report says it was not successful.

CHENEY: The report is full of crap.

ACOSTA: To the agency's former director Michael Hayden.

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN (RET), FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: What stunned me about the report was the fact that it was written in the way it was written. It is an unrelenting prosecutorial document.

ACOSTA: Both men say the CIA is right asserting that harsh interrogation techniques like those show in the film "Zero Dark Thirty" actually prevented attacks and saved life. But on that crucial question, the White House takes no position.

EARNEST: It is impossible to know the counter-factual. It's impossible to know whether or not this information could have been obtained using tactics that are consistent with the Army Field Manual or other law enforcement techniques.

SEN. MARK UDALL, (D) COLORADO: The CIA is lying.

ACOSTA: Colorado Democratic Senator Mark Udall called on the president to clean house at the CIA. Udall said an internal review of the interrogation program conducted by former CIA director Leon Panetta found the agency repeatedly misled Congress about the brutal tactics. UDALL: The president needs to purge his administration of high level

officials who were instrumental to the development and running of this program. For Director Brennan, that means resigning.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: The White House is standing by John Brennan, saying the president has confidence in his CIA director. And Brennan will have a chance to defend himself in person later on today when he holds a news conference at the CIA. Alisyn and Chris?

CUOMO: All right, Jim, thank you very much for the reporting.

You know, a very interesting perspective here will be what did people at the CIA think they were doing and what did they think about that? And we can get that to you right now. We have former senior CIA terrorism analyst Cindy Storer. She currently works with Kronos Advisory, but you were in the intelligence business, Cindy, working at the CIA during the time this was going on. Let me ask you straight out, did people at the CIA know that torture was going on in the name of the United States' interests?

CINDY STORER, FORMER SENIOR CIA TERRORISM ANALYST: Certainly people, some people at CIA knew that these things were happening. They didn't call it torture. If they called it torture they wouldn't have been doing it because that's illegal. So you had to go through the process of going through lawyers and going through the law and figuring out what was considered to be legal at the time and what wasn't.

Now, not everybody knew what was being done. In fact most people didn't know the details.

CUOMO: And why do you think that was?

STORER: Well, it's the kind of thing you don't want leaks. That's one of the biggest reasons. And everybody knew, and I know that others have said this before, that eventually the information is going to get out and a lot of people are going to disagree with it. And so if you're going to continue a program like this you have to prevent leaks as long as possible.

CUOMO: The Panetta report that Congress was misled by people at the CIA, do you believe that?

STORER: I do. Yes. One of the things that happens on the inside, just like any other bureaucracy where the leadership has decided that something needs doing and that it's a good thing, and then the questions that come down to the workforce are not, is this a good thing or not. It's, help me justify this thing that we've decided to do.

CUOMO: This is big. So you have the head of the CIA right now. You have past heads of counterterrorism and of the agency. You have the vice president, all of them say the government knew what we were doing and they said it was OK. You're saying that's not true. How confident are you in that? STORER: Well, certainly the Justice Department I think knew -- OK,

let me take that back. I'm not sure who at highest levels knew all of the details, because I wasn't privy to that. I opted out from the beginning, so --

CUOMO: Why?

STORER: -- I wouldn't see a lot of those details.

CUOMO: Why? It was legal, it was OK?

STORER: Right. Because I thought it was morally wrong, and I didn't know exactly what was happening, but I could see the atmosphere building after 9/11, and people are saying things like "the gloves are coming off." And I just had this feeling that that was, this was not going in any kind of a good direction and I didn't want to be part of it.

CUOMO: Let me play something for you that a former colleague of yours at the CIA said about one of the reasons that these tactics were deemed OK. Play the sound.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE BAKER, FORMER CIA COVERT OPERATIONS: But none of us are planning to fly planes into a building, kill thousands of people or behead individuals on videotape and blast it around the world.

CUOMO: But that goes to vengeance, not effectiveness, right. That goes to the anger you feel --

BAKER: No it doesn't, no it doesn't, no it doesn't. It goes to what you're charged with, which is saving lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: He said that the tactics that you used, that you used them on each other first to try it out. Is there any reason to believe that you did to each other what you would do to detainees?

STORER: You couldn't go -- you wouldn't go as far on each other.

CUOMO: It sounds like an excuse.

STORER: Well, all the reports say that, I mean, again, I wasn't involved but all the reports say, including the internal investigation, that things went beyond the training manual. So clearly there were things done not done to our own people and under different conditions. One of the psychologists in the report is talking about the difference between being a voluntary person going through this and being someone who is being coerced, and that there are different psychological effects.

CUOMO: The CIA was asked in short order to become something that decidedly it was not by all accounts. One was operationally able to take on these types of interrogations and, two, able to be a detention management place. Do you believe the CIA was overwhelmed with the mandate?

STORER: Sure. Anybody would be. You have to remember, this is right after 9/11. It was kind of crazy. Everybody was worried about the next attack coming and the attack after that and the attack after that, and that we didn't see another 9/11 in the U.S. There were major attacks overseas fairly frequently for a couple of years. And so the CIA was under tremendous pressure to never let it happen again. And that's the phrase, this is never going to happen again.

CUOMO: But it seems like there was a recklessness guiding this. Now you hear the people at the top justifying it. It was vetted, it was OK, we knew how to do it, it was a balancing process of a little bit of enhanced stuff and a little bit of regular stuff. But was the real reality, as word spread throughout the agency, that this was reckless, that you were just trying to do whatever you could, it was more desperation than it was strategic?

STORER: Listen, a lot of what the CIA does is, get a mission, go do it. It's a can-do organization and people just do the best they can on the fly. Is that recklessness? I don't know. Again, I'm not justifying it because I think it's morally wrong.

CUOMO: Do you think Brennan should step down?

STORER: I don't know because I don't know the extent of his involvement.

CUOMO: How could he not have known? How would people at the top of the organization not know what's going on below it? Is that a reality? Can that be possible?

STORER: On this subject?

CUOMO: Yes.

STORER: I don't know if everybody knew everything. This is impossible to know. Also - yes?

CUOMO: OK. What else do you want to tell us, before I let you go?

STORER: Just that I think this is something that I'm glad it's come out because we need to have this talk about who we are as a nation. Are we people who do this or not?

CUOMO: We got to get straight what was done and who said it was OK, and then we can talk about why we do these things. That's the problem is that we have two different versions of what happened and why. We need to narrow that down. That's why your perspective is helpful, Cindy, and I'll probably call on you again for this as we get more information.

STORER: OK, thank you, Chris.

CUOMO: Thank you. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: All right, let's talk about some extreme weather. A monster storm is set to slam northern California. It's expected to pack heavy rain and hurricane-force winds, triggering emergency preparations. And while the coming deluge may seem like relief to the drought-stricken region, millions of people are in the path of what could be the state's worst storm in decades. CNN's Dan Simon is live in San Francisco with the latest. Look at this picture of the winds near the San Francisco Bay Bridge. Wow. Dan, what's it like there?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey Alisyn. We are in downtown San Francisco. Right now things are relatively calm but the city is expected to get absolutely hammered, somewhere between four and nine inches of rain. That's why some say this could be the worst storm in a nun of years. In fact it could rival the worst storm we've seen in 50 years. If it isn't the rain it could be the wind. We're expecting hurricane force winds could get anywhere from 50 to 60 miles per hour. As you said, they're taking a close look at the bridges. The Golden Gate bridge hasn't been closed since 1983. So if they have to close the bridge that would truly be historic.

As you can imagine there have been all kinds of preparations in the last few days. Public schools are closed today. Utility crewmen trimming tree limbs to make sure they don't fall on power lines, clearing storm drains so you don't have much flooding. But we'll keep a close eye on the situation. As I said right now, things relatively calm, but could be seeing a lot of rain in a matter of minutes, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, be careful, Dan, take cover. Thanks so much.

CUOMO: Literally the calm before the storm. Let's get more on what is headed that way from meteorologist Chad Myers. What do you see?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I just saw a 96-mile-per-hour wind gust about 150 miles north of San Francisco as the rain came onshore with the thunderstorms. So that's in the cards for the people there of northern California.

They've had it up in Washington and Oregon already the past couple of days, but now the system is sliding closer to San Francisco and it is going to be a brutal day. Already 98 flights are canceled into San Francisco this morning, and it's only, what, 5:12 in the morning. So more cancellations are likely throughout the day.

Four to eight inches of rainfall. To break a drought you need an inch of rain maybe every four days. You don't need four inches of rain in 24 hours or, for that matter, eight inches. But we will get a lot of snow in the Sierra, that's great, get the snow up there. Blizzard warnings. Even one report I saw said they can expect on the top of the ridges up near Tahoe, 120-mile-per-hour wind gusts are possible on the highest of elevations and even into San Francisco, winds of 50 or 60 miles per hour. Today all the way to 55, Reno tonight all the way to 60.

But here is another important question here. This storm kind of slides farther to the south, so L.A., you'll get winds almost 40 miles per hour tomorrow. That's how it looks. This is a big storm, one on the west, one on the east coast. The east coast storm obviously winding down, a little bit of light snow in New York City, but the big snow for the rest of the day is in the south of the Niagara frontier all the way to about Erie, Pennsylvania. Guys, back to you.

CAMEROTA: Chad, thanks so much for keeping an eye on it.

CUOMO: A lot of news this morning. Let's get you right to Michaela for that.

PEREIRA: All right, here we go. Good morning once again everybody.

A dangerous Khorasan operative may have survived a U.S. air strike. It was initially believed that French jihadist David Drugeon was killed when his car was hit in an attack last month. American officials however now say the master bomb-maker was only injured and treated at a secure location.

Newly released video taken just hours after the deadly mass shooting at Seattle Pacific University back in June shows the suspected gunman giving his account of what happened and why. In the video, Aaron Ybarra describes posing as a transfer student to tour the campus before the shooting. He also spoke about struggling with demons.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AARON YBARRA, ALLEGED SHOOTER: I wouldn't have wanted to kill people. I wanted to live a happy, successful life. But my hate got in my way. The compulsiveness was just overcoming.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: One student was killed, two others were wounded. Ybarra has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder charges.

A Florida man is smiling wide after winning $3 million in a scratch off lotto game. He is catching some flack. Timothy Poole is a registered sex offender, arrested in 1999 for abusing a minor. People were outraged when they recognized the man in the picture that was posted online. The 43-year-old man has been arrested 12 times and served time in prison twice.

All right, here is a picture that is worth 1,000 words. In this case it is worth $6.5 million, a world record, by the way, as the most expensive photo ever sold. It is titled "Phantom" captured by fine art photographer Peter Lik at Arizona's Antelope Canyon. I've always wanted to go there. The black-and-white photo shows a beam of light resembling a ghost-like figure. That photo is sold to a private collector, decided to remain anonymous last month.

CUOMO: We'll leave it up there. What do you think it is? If you didn't know that's what it was, what did you think it is?

PEREIRA: No, to me, it's light or smoke or whatever rising.

CUOMO: What would you think it is?

CAMEROTA: A moonscape of some kind. CUOMO: I thought it was part of the president's endoscopy showing

acid reflux.

PEREIRA: OK, wow.

CUOMO: I really did. Oh, this is heartburn. I had an endoscopy done and looked just like that.

CAMEROTA: Well, I wonder how much that would fetch at auction.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Let's try it out at eBay.

PEREIRA: Let's raise some money.

CUOMO: My mother would buy it. She's very interested.

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: She would hang it on the wall.

CAMEROTA: That's so wonderful.

All right. Back to our top story now, because there's fallout from the CIA torture report. The agency and Bush era officials are on the defensive this morning. Dick Cheney even calling the report, quote, "full of crap." We're talking with a lawmaker who is part of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

CUOMO: All right. Plus, parents out there, you may be hurting your kids and don't know it, microwaving. I know we've felt different ways about it over the years, but there's new information.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta will fill us in.

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CAMEROTA: The CIA on the defense this morning over the Senate report on the use of what it calls torture during CIA interrogations. Former Vice President Dick Cheney calls the report, quote, "full of crap" and says that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques were justified.

Let's bring in Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. He's on the Select Committee on Intelligence. He's also a ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee and a medical doctor.

Senator Coburn, great to see you this morning.

SEN. TOM COBURN (R), OKLAHOMA: Good morning. How are you?

CAMEROTA: Doing well.

So, after a blistering report like this is released, there are often calls for someone to be held accountable for what we see in this report. Who do you think is responsible or should be held responsible?

COBURN: Well, I -- I think first thing ought to be the critique of the report. I was really disappointed. You can't just look at pieces of paper and make the judgments that the committee made. There's no context in this report because nobody was interviewed that had association with any of this.

CAMEROTA: Well, the committee said they couldn't interview CIA operatives because there was an investigation going on. So, that they were blocked --

COBURN: No, they could -- they were blocked from interviewing because Obama administration had threatened to prosecute them, so you can't put them in dual jeopardy. So, therefore, you put out a substandard report that doesn't have any context until that had been decided.

So, the number one goal is to get out a report, whether it's accurate or not. So, I don't agree with the assumption of the report.

The CIA did a lot of things wrong, there's no question. We all recognize that.

I think they've admitted that. They weren't prepared to do this in 9/11. They were handed something to do under the guidance of legal counsel that was granted. So, I'm not as upset about that.

I'll tell you the number one thing I'm upset about on this report, what are the recommendations for us for the future? When we have another issue and we're going to have issues like this come again, especially with ISIL and the world in the shape it is, what are the facts that need to be learned to guide us to make better decisions in the future? There's none of that in here.

CAMEROTA: Wouldn't the Senate committee say they weren't tasked with that, that wasn't the point of this report? They were assessing what happened and getting a full accounting of whether or not those enhanced interrogation techniques did lead to actionable intelligence or if they were classified as torture but moving forward that wasn't their goal.

COBURN: Well, I think their goal was to say exactly what they said without putting it in context. That's why I think the report has very little value.

I know what the CIA did wrong. I'm privileged to have interviewed many of the interrogators, and seen the consequences of both the fruits and the consequences of their actions.

To me, we know we made mistakes as a country following 9/11. I see very little import of this report in terms of how it will guide us for the future and I think that's the biggest failing. We need help for the future on how are we going to handle these things in the future and what are we going to learn from the mistakes we did make, what is it to be learned and how do we guide that and how do we give informed knowledge to people making decisions in the future? And to me, we've got it all stirred up about the CIA and torture, and everything else. The thing is, what did we learn? And I'm disappointed with he came to a conclusion without any contextual insight to it and without any recommendations for the future.

CAMEROTA: Do you think that the head of the CIA, John Brennan, who were the deputy director from 2001 to 2003, should stay on as the head of the CIA?

COBURN: I absolutely do. I do. I didn't vote to confirm John Brennan but I found him to be honest with me in my dealings in intelligence on the committee, and also to be very straightforward. I've not found that he's been dishonest or lied to me or led me astray in any way, and we're aggressive on that committee in terms of double- checking what we're told.

So, I have confidence that he -- I don't think we ought to change it middle stream right now. I think he also has confidence in the team there.

CAMEROTA: You are well-known in Congress as the person who points out all of the wasteful spending. You're sort of the pork slayer and you will be leaving Congress next year. But not before you've given them one massive report on tax loopholes.

What did you find in that report?

COBURN: Well, I just -- you know, I found we're going to spend $5 trillion over the next five years in terms of tax benefits to selected groups of people that may not necessarily be in the terms of it growing and creating new jobs.

We tried not to be real specific about our recommendations, but rather create something that the American people could look at and read, say, well, where does the money go?

For example, home mortgages, everybody said that's a middle class benefit. It's not, 73 percent of it goes to people making a quarter million dollars more a year. So, that's not middle class. That's upper class.

And so, we have all the false assumptions in the tax codes saying it's for middle class when it's not, and the whole point of this was to inform where the money is going, and whether or not it's accomplishing things that are good for the country.

My thought would be that we ought to have capital go where it gets the greatest benefit for the most people in this country. And when we pick and choose winners through the tax code, we don't necessarily do a very good job at that. And consequently, we have a lot of people that don't have jobs today and a lot of wealth that's not being created because we've done it.

CAMEROTA: It's hard to argue with that logic, and those reports are always an entertaining and troubling read.

Senator Tom Coburn, thanks so much for joining us on NEW DAY.

COBURN: You're welcome. Glad to be with you. Good morning.

CAMEROTA: Let's go over to Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Alisyn. This is something that comes up from time to time but we have new information for you, household products, could they be harming your kids and you not even know it? There's a new study finds many things we have in the house do contain a potentially toxic chemical.

We're going to bring in Dr. Sanjay Gupta to tell us what they are and what we can do about it.

Also, the way the e-mails came out was wrong but boy are they interesting to look at. Sony Pictures e-mails from big-named producers talking about big-named stars and other producers and with really just reveal an ugly world. We're going to take you through it.

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PEREIRA: All right. It's a NEW DAY, it's a new you.

Common household products may be harming your children.