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Hillary Email Investigation Could Take Months; Politics And The Selma Anniversary; Role Of Women In The Arab World

Aired March 06, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Not one but two aviation close calls, one on each coast. We had actor Harrison Ford badly banged up but alive after crash-landing his World-War-II-era plane on a golf course in Los Angeles. Ford reported an engine failure shortly after take-off. He is expected to make a full recovery.

Back here in New York, a much more dangerous situation. A Delta flight, 127 passengers on board, skidding off an icy runway at New York's LaGuardia Airport. Two dozen injuries, none life-threatening. But still, it could have been so much worse. The plane came to a stop just a few feet short of the water.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Some breaking news just in to CNN. A 23-year-old man has been arrested by British law enforcement in connection with a hack on the Department of Defense. The attack happened last June. It hit a satellite system that sends messages worldwide, although we have been told that national security was not compromised. That man's identity has not been released.

CUOMO: Jodi Arias will not face the death penalty for a second time since her 2013 conviction, a jury deadlocked. Judge will now have to decide in April if she'll be allowed parole after serving 25 years behind bars. Arias, you'll remember, confessed to killing her boyfriend, Travis Alexander, but maintains she did it in self-defense.

PEREIRA: Surprised by the outcome?

CUOMO: No, it's tough, they already had a problem with it once, it only takes one and that's what happened in this case.

PEREIRA: All right, 7:30 on the nose here, straight to "Inside Politics" on this Friday with John King, culmination of a big week.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": That's been a big week, Michaela. Good morning to you. Happy Friday to you, Mr. Cuomo and Alisyn, who is down at the Bush Library, we'll get to her in a second.

With me to close this big week "Inside Politics" are Margaret Talev of "Bloomberg Politics" and Olivier Knox at "Yahoo News." Let's start with the Hillary Clinton e-mail controversy. We've been talking about it all week and the question is, does it have legs?

Is this going to be a problem for her if she moves into the presidential campaign phase or is this a media frenzy and something Republicans are seizing on?

And if you haven't been watching the news this week, Hillary Clinton has now acknowledged she had a private email server. It was at her home in New York.

She did government business on this email server. Her team saying nothing nefarious here, she has the records, she preserved the records. They're available to the government.

Therefore, no big deal, others have done it before hand. Secretary of State John Kerry has to deal with the processing of all of this. Request for information from news organizations, subpoenas from the Congress, questions about whether in fact everything was preserved. He says this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: With respect to Secretary Clinton's emails, the State Department has, had access to a wide array of Secretary Clinton's records, including emails between her and department officials with the state.gov accounts.

I think we have all the ones that are state.gov, which are appropriately the ones in the purview of the department. But let me check on that when I actually have time to pay attention to such an important issue when I get home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: You know, my question is that such an important issue part, is that from John Kerry like a go away, I've got more important things to deal with here or does he really think it's such an important issue?

OLIVIER KNOX, "YAHOO NEWS": He's telling us to take a long walk off a short pier. He's got the Iran nuclear negotiations, the situation in Ukraine. He has all of these other world problems, I get that.

However, you started out by asking whether this is a real issue or a political frenzy, I don't think we have to choose on this one, it touches the Clintons. It calls into question their judgment. It calls into question how they did the people's business. We have a lot of questions and we're not getting a lot of answers.

MARGARET TALEV, "BLOOMBERG POLITICS": It's sort of like a virus. It's going to live out its life cycle now. Lay low for a while and there are going to be all of these inflection points as the contents of the emails are read and gone through.

Anything else that leaks as her campaign rolls out officially and begins to ramp up, and this exists both on the substantive level, what was she emailing, did it violate any of the stuff and on the political level which is eating up so much of our energy this week, which is she using good judgment, getting in front of potential controversies or scandals and waiting for them to be discovered?

KING: And God forbid, one of the things we asked when we are talking about the political context is she being consistent? Now remember she's not the first person to do this. Former secretaries of state have used private accounts.

Karl Rove it turns out used a political account to do some business. Back then, in 2007, watch this, Candidate Hillary Clinton back in 2007, voicing her outrage at the Bush administration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: We know about the secret wiretaps. We know about the secret military tribunals, the secret White House email accounts. It is a stunning record of secrecy and corruption.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Coming soon to a Republican ad near you.

TALEV: I think it's already -- yes, it's maybe happening.

KING: She does open herself to that. That's just -- you can't beat up the other guys about secrecy, and she says corruption. Let's just focus on the secrecy. There's no evidence that Secretary Clinton was corrupt here, but there is evidence she was secretive.

If she had kept the personal server inside the walls of the State Department I think it would be more for the technology and the legal people to deal with, not the political people to deal with. The fact that it was in her private home, we don't know.

We assume she's turning everything over. We give her the benefit of the doubt, but it's hard to say. We assume we are going to get most of what she did government business on, but what if she, using her personal account, emailed aides in the State Department, also using personal accounts, will we ever see those?

KNOX: Well, we don't know that she's turning everything over. I mean, part of the point of this is that she and her advisers have kept a close hold on these emails. The statistics here is they turned over 55,000 pages of her communications to the State Department late last year.

I don't know how much that is of her overall communication. I don't know how they reviewed those, the body of her work to decide what gets turned over and what doesn't. I have no idea how that review process unfolded.

KING: Because of her last name and the history of the Clinton family, and the words I don't know will lead to a significant and legitimate inquiries from committees in Congress and it will also lead to a frenzy out there in the Clinton conspiracy theory world, which is sometimes a bit out there, but she's asked for this I guess is the best way to put it.

The president of the United States along with many others will be in Selma, Alabama this weekend for a very important commemoration, 50 years since the historic Selma march.

This is an interview with Joe Madison on the radio. He's talking about the responsibility of the generation that came after Selma to advance the civil rights movement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Those who follow them had a responsibility to you know, grab the torch and move it forward. And I think that the generation that has followed that civil rights generation, has in many ways, made great strides.

In part just by walking through the doors of opportunity that those giants helped to open up. But I also think that we all recognize that there continue to be challenges that require not just individuals living well and raising good kids, but requires collective action and mobilization.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Talking generally there, but he's part of that generation. He's part of our history. He's our first African-American president. As we know, this issue, the politics of Barack Obama have been part of our race discussion. Look at our latest poll out today.

Race relations under President Obama, a poll of all Americans, are they better, 15 percent now say this in May of 2009, 32 percent said that. Are they worse? Four in ten Americans think race relations have gotten worse during the administration of our first African-American president, 45 percent say about the same. What do you make of that?

TALEV: I think it's really hard to understand what that means. It's hard to understand why people answered it that way. So much of this comes at a time of that's economic upheaval with the 2008 recession and of the real political polarization, the clash between Obama and the Republicans.

It's hard to say who is being blamed for it and who is to blame for it overlapping with Ferguson, Missouri and everything that's happened in New York. It will take history to tell what the legacy of the first black presidency is in the United States. For Obama it comes at a complex time where Ferguson gets under his skin.

Hard to deal with and the message he's trying to send to black Americans, especially in impoverished places in the south is to vote, engage, do stuff, but not to blame the victim at the same time.

KING: How can it be, Olivier, if you look at the last several presidential elections, look at the non-white vote for the Republican Party, George W. Bush is going to be there in Selma.

Senator Tim Scott, the first African-American Republican since reconstruction will be in Selma. "Politico" says about two dozen House and Senate Republicans have agreed to be there in Selma. Not one member of the Republican leadership. KNOX: Yes, we were talking about questions of judgment before. I think this is another question of judgment. I think it's really unfortunate there's no one from the House, the House Republican leadership who is going to be at this event.

You know, I think it reflects some of the polarization that Margaret talked about a little bit earlier. I don't know how friendly a crowd this will be.

KING: How hard can it be, number one, it should be important to you in your heart and in your soul. Number two, if it isn't, and it should be, how hard is it to take eight, ten, 12 hours and send one or two high-level people to be part of something to send a signal? Why is that so hard?

KNOX: Why not send George W. Bush and Tim Scott, as you pointed out? Why not send two people who are high-profile figures of the Republican Party down. There they're going so the party is not going to be unrepresented.

TALEV: They could be better representative. I think it's a bad call.

KING: They could do a better job. They call, they say they are spending all of their week saying Secretary Clinton could have done a better job and she could have, so could have you.

Alisyn as we get back to you, I know you're in a great place. Jimmy Fallon on the "Tonight Show," this might be Martin O'Malley's great big moment. You're in the oval office, Martin O'Malley would love to have an oval office, but he has Jimmy Fallon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW": Settle there's rumors that former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley may enter the race and challenge Hillary for the Democratic nomination. Who's going to go from being totally unknown to beating her for the presidency?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: He broke through on late night. He broke through on late night. I've been where you are and you're very lucky, isn't that a great place?

CAMEROTA: It's great. I mean, it's phenomenal to see all of the details they've recreated here in the oval office at the Bush Center in Dallas. So I'll have a lot more of that, John. Thanks so much.

Make sure to watch John King and his "INSIDE POLITICS" panel break down all latest political news every week at 8:30 a.m. Sunday.

What does the world get wrong about Arab women? Two women working to change the perception and the reality, join us next with that answer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We firmly believe that women will lead the freedom movement in societies that aren't as free as they should be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was former President George W. Bush yesterday speaking at the Bush Institute in Dallas about extremism in the Middle East. President Bush along with former first lady, Laura Bush, started a program here that they believe will be the key to peace and freedom in the Arab world and the most critical piece is women.

So to help explain all of this, let's bring in Zanib Salbe. She is the founder of Women for Women International, and Emna Ben Mustapha Ben Arab, she is a former member of the Tunisian parliament. She was one of 14 graduates of the 2014 Women's Initiative Fellowship Program here at the Bush Center. Welcome ladies. It's so great to talk to you again.

Wow, yesterday was really an emotional graduation ceremony for you and your 13 classmates. And I want to get to what you learned here at the Bush Center in one moment.

But first I want to start with you, Zanib, because you have devoted your life to trying to empower women. Now you're focused on the Middle East. Can you explain the theory that you share with the Bushes here, that women are key to somehow ending extremism throughout that region?

ZAINAB SALBI, FOUNDER, WOMEN FOR WOMEN INTERNATIONAL: Absolutely. Women are the battlefield right now for a battle of ideologies between extremism and values for civil societies and freedom and democracy. Both sides are having to acknowledging that women are actually part of that battlefield, that's why extremists are appealing to women.

That's why they're trying to recruit women. They're giving them a purpose. Now to the way to combat them is to make sure that the women who are speaking up, who are advocating for education and employment and entrepreneurialship and civil societies, who are in the Middle East.

They are very active women. We need to empower them. We need to hear their voices and we to honor them, celebrate them and we need to include them at the negotiating table.

CAMEROTA: But on the flip side it doesn't seem that a week goes by that we don't hear some tragic story of a female activist, a leading lawyer, a politician, who is being kidnapped, and assassinated. We see Boko Haram kidnapping hundreds of school girls just because they went to school, selling them off. It feels as though women are not winning this fight.

SALBI: Well, I mean, that all is to say basically the fundamentals are associating women's rights with fundamentalism. They're combating women's rights as a way to promoting their ideology of fundamentalism.

The other side, we, all of us, the Arab world as well as the foreign international community, as President Bush said yesterday, we need to associate women's rights with the battle against fundamentalism.

We need to make sure that these women are being assassinated, killed and kidnap, are actually protected. We need to make sure that their voices are heard. We need to associate women's rights with building civil societies and freedom and peace in the Middle East.

CAMEROTA: We'll talk about how to do that in a moment. First I want to talk about your experience at the Bush Center. You've had a year- long program where you came over here. You were exposed to democracy and capitalism and freedom of speech. Tell us what you learned?

EMNA BEN MUSTAPHA BEN ARAB, FORMER MEMBER OF TUNISIAN PARLIAMENT: Well, I had a chance to be part of the women initiative leadership program and it was great experience for me. We've -- these great site visits and a meeting with great men and women leaders.

And the most important thing that I learned here is that I learned to focus and to prioritize my objective, and to give importance to what's I like most, which is to advance and nurture the idea that quality education for all, especially for women, is key to social stability, economic prosperity and intellectual breadth. So this is a very, very important.

CAMEROTA: And of course, you will take that home with you, to Tunisia and try to work on helping build education for everyone and women, included. Zainib, I want to get to a piece that you recently wrote for CNN.com. It was called what the world gets wrong about Arab women. What does the world get wrong about Arab women?

SALBI: Well the world think of Arab women as passive, oppressed, suppressed, have no voices. And if you look at the Arab spring for example, women played a major role. Actually women in many ways were the spark for the Arab spring.

I mean, they literally went to the streets in cities like Benghazi, Libya, which has now fallen under the fundamentalists, it's the women who banged in the streets, Tunisian streets, Egyptian streets, Syrian streets, it was the women who actually stood up in the front lines and said enough is enough. We want democracy right now.

Now the question is these same women are being killed right now. We need to protect them. We need to make sure that they are in our international policies and our international relationships, that they are protected.

CAMEROTA: How do we do that?

SALBI: Well, first you bring it to the international level. This is a national security issue in my opinion. How do we promote women in these countries? How do we make sure their governments are hearing them and incorporating them into the decision-making, it's important? Second thing, we need to do more programs like this. This is

very, very important. It is actually how do you plant the seeds for the future? How do you make sure these women have leadership skills and they are promoted and supported? These are very critical programs that actually enable the women over there to thrive.

CAMEROTA: And Emna, what will you do? What seeds will you plant when you go back to Tunisia? What are your plans?

BEN ARAB: My plans revolve around the idea of nurturing the idea of quality of education should be available for all. And in Tunisia -- I mean, Tunisia has a long-standing reformist tradition in relation to women and women's rights.

They think back to 1956 and this is really important, and that gave women autonomy and voice. But women today in Tunisia need support and need international support to go on with this.

CAMEROTA: And more can always be done as you all have proven with your fellow classmates here. Emna, Zainab, thanks so much for the conversation. Great to talk to both of you and congratulations on your graduation.

In our next hour, we will tackle more of these topics in my exclusive live interview with former first lady, Laura Bush. Stick around for that -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Alisyn, it's a great conversation in such a great setting. You know, to have it in the oval office really kind of centered it all.

All right, this weekend as we've been telling you, it marks one year since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished, do you believe that a whole year. You can see family and friends of those on know the big question in this situation, and we have the latest information toward an answer ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: It has been a year since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. This morning family and friends of the passengers will gather in Kuala Lumpur for a memorial. That's where we find Anna Coren live for us this morning. What is the mood like there and what do we expect?

ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chris, as you say, families are here in the next few hours. This will be a smaller vigil. The larger vigil will be Sunday, which will mark one year anniversary since MH- 370 disappeared.

Families grappling for answers because there are none, Chris, this is a plane that disappeared off the radar one year ago on the 8th of March, 2014. And still no sign of it. No trace whatsoever despite a huge search happening in the Southern Indian Ocean about a thousand nautical miles off the coast of Western Australia.

It's been narrowed down to some 2300 square miles. They believe they will complete that search area by May, but if it's not there, the fear of the families is that the operation will be wound down. Authorities we've spoken 20 refuse to be drawn into the debate.

They believe the search needs to continue. Speaking to the CEO of Malaysia Airlines today, Chris, he is hopeful that the search will continue because he believes that everybody needs answers -- Chris.

CUOMO: The frustration has been almost unbearable for the families and time, they say, helps, but not so far. Anna Coren, thank you so much for staying on the story. Please be sure to watch our CNN special report, "Vanished, The Mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370." That is tonight at 9:00 p.m.

PEREIRA: Thankfully this flight didn't have that outcome. Harrison Ford in the hospital after his plane crashed. How exactly did this happen? We'll speak with a man who has flown with the legendary actor.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARRISON FORD: 93178 engine failure.

PEREIRA: Actor Harrison Ford battered and bruised but very much alive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He must be a very good pilot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sorry, having the aircraft off the runway.