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New Developments In Freddie Gray Case; Senate Set to Vote On Loretta Lynch; Saudi Strikes Pound Houthi Targets; Former CIA Director Could Get Two Years Probation; Interview with former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, Stephen Sechel. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired April 23, 2015 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:02] ALIYSN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Let's begin our team coverage with CNN's Suzanne Malveaux in Baltimore.

Suzanne?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. We have seen these protests grow in intensity and we are expecting they are going to grow in size. We're expecting thousands of people to arrive here at City Hall. It's being sponsored by the pastor of the family and we expect the mother and stepfather to be here as well as the NAACP. This all leading up to the weekend, Saturday where they are calling for people around the country, black lives matter, black lawyers for justice, saying that they are going to hold a rally bigger, all of this because people want answers as to what happened to Freddie Gray.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (voice-over): Protests continuing into the night in Baltimore. After another tense standoff with police.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Watch yourself. I got you.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): Hundreds of protesters demanding answers in the death of Freddie Gray.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Hands up, don't shoot!

MALVEAUX (voice-over): People frustrated, filling the streets, blocking traffic.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Hands up, don't shoot!

MALVEAUX (voice-over): Some even laying down on the middle of the intersections. This as new video shows Gray minutes after his initial arrest, the last time he was seen publicly and alive. The video shows Gray not moving, lying half in and half out of the police van. This is when police say they shackled his ankles.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He wasn't responding. He was down and his feet were like this. And they picked him up and threw him up in the paddy wagon.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): What exactly happened to the 25-year-old when he was placed back in that van remains a mystery.

MICHAEL DAVEY, FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE ATTORNEY: Something happened in that van. We just don't know what.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): An attorney for the Baltimore City Police Union tried to answer questions Tuesday, despite calls from protesters demanding the arrest of the six officers involved.

(CHANTING)

MALVEAUX (voice-over): The Fraternal Order of Police defending the officers' actions.

DAVEY: In this type of an incident, you don't need probable cause to arrest, you just need a reasonable suspicion to make the stop and that's what they had in this case.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): More than four days after Gray died from a nearly severed spine, CNN has been told the body will be released from state custody soon. And the family wants an independent autopsy. His relatives hoping for a second opinion on the cause of death.

MARY KOCH, FREDDIE GRAY FAMILY ATTORNEY: The most you can say about Freddie Gray's family is that they are totally devastated. They tried to process the loss of their son, their brother, their friend.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (on camera): The mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings- Blake, has reached out to the family, she wanted to meet with them, offer her condolences to try to work with them and we are told the family has declined that. They say that this is not the appropriate time, their focus now is on trying to figure out how to bury their son.

CAMEROTA: Yes. We just keep hearing how overwhelmed that family is by grief.

Suzanne, thank you so much for that.

Well, according to the attorney for the Police Union, five of the six officers have given their side of the events to investigators. So 11 days after the arrests, when will the public know what happened? let's get the latest on that.

Let's get right to CNN's Evan Perez with the latest on that.

Hi, Evan.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Hi, Alisyn. We will be waiting a while. The Baltimore Police Union is firmly backing the six police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray. The union officials say the five of the six officers have provided their statements to investigators, and they have been suspended with pay, but they say they committed no crime. Gray died after suffering a spinal cord injury the police cannot explain. Baltimore Police Commissioner, Anthony Batts, says another prisoner in the police transport van told investigators that nothing unusual happened on the way to jail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY BATTS, BALTIMORE POLICE COMMISSIONER: The second prisoner that was picked says that he didn't see any harm done to Freddie at all. What he has said is that he heard Freddie thrashing about and the driver did not drive erratically.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: Justice Department civil rights investigators and the FBI are now gathering evidence for their own investigation. The federal probe would have to approve that the officers intended to deny Gray his civil rights, and as you know, that's always a tough

case to make as we saw in the shooting of Michael Brown last year.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Absolutely. And also it makes you wonder, you know, do you have too many cooks in the kitchen right now? Four different investigations going on but they all seem to derive from what the police are offering up.

So let's bring in Mary Koch. She's part of the legal team representing the family of 25-year-old Freddie Gray.

Mrs. Koch, thank you very much. Let's start with the family. How are they handling the situation emotionally? What do they believe happened to Freddie Gray?

KOCH: You know, I don't think they are speculating at this point about what happened to Freddie other than to say that they know that Freddie was healthy and happy, and that day that he was obviously healthy when he was, you know, as the police say, was running, and a week and a day later he is no longer with us. That's all they know right now, and that is a very large part of their frustration, not having any information to help them process any of this, and just being absolutely devastated by the loss of this young man who was so important in their lives.

[08:05:16] CUOMO: Let's go back to the beginning and see what makes sense to you and what does not. The police are now saying now, the Police Union Attorney is saying, you didn't need probable cause here, you need reasonable suspicion. Now that's probably a nod to the fact that Freddie Gray had an extensive record with a lot of drug wraps on it and open cases and that reasonable suspicion would be enough for a stop of that kind of person. Do you agree with that?

KOCH: I totally disagree with that. I will tell you, I spent 11 years of my career in the prosecutor's office so I've dealt with these kind of issues in the past. First of all, putting aside what Freddie Gray may or may not have done, the officers did not have any of that information if it existed at the time that they saw Freddie Gray, and they say Freddie looked at them and began to run. So to now try to bootstrap and say that that information somehow is relevant to the thought process of the officers is absolutely incorrect. Secondly --

CUOMO: How do we know what the officers knew about Freddie Gray? KOCH: Well, I have read the application for statement of charges,

which is a document that was written by the officers asking for basically the ability to issue charges against Freddie Gray after -- right around the time of the incident, that application for statement of charges, mentions nothing about any knowledge of any kind of criminal record on the part of Freddie Gray and it only mentions that Freddie Gray looked at the officers and ran that the officers then pursued him and apprehended him and after that apprehension, they then said that they found a knife, a knife that no one has ever seen. There are lots of knives that are legal in the state of Maryland. No one has ever seen this evidence --

CUOMO: So there is no proof on that yet?

KOCH: There is no proof. More importantly, it doesn't amount to reasonable articulable suspicion, which is what the police lawyers are talking about.

CUOMO: Right. Kevin -

KOCH: You need - Go ahead.

CUOMO: I'm sorry, I wanted to get to another point that I think you will want to comment on.

Kevin Moore in "The Baltimore Sun" just gave an interview, he was one of the people to shoot cell phone video. He says two things that I want you to comment on. The first one is that the police had Gray folded up like a piece of origami; he was all bent up.

KOCH: Uh-huh.

CUOMO: What do you make of that suggestion?

KOCH: To be honest with you, I can't make anything of that suggestion at this point because I don't know what the medical implications of that are, and until we see the medical records and the medical examiner's findings, it's difficult to take those kinds of facts and come to any conclusions.

I don't want to keep repeating it, but the conclusion we can draw right now is a healthy young man died after being in police custody and he was fine before the police laid hands on him and he died days later, and that's what you can say at this point with certainty.

CUOMO: Now something else that he says cuts the other way. He says that Freddie Gray was saying, "I can't breathe, I need a pump," referring to his asthma. That will go to whether or not they were treating him the right way from a medical perspective, but it also goes to whether or not the spine was the issue for him and why he was dragging along the way. Do you think that's a window into understanding what was or what was not going on with him physically, that he was talking about asthma and not his spine or legs?

KOCH: That has been reported that he talked about asthma. I know that generally he complained, my understanding is he made medical complaints. The significance of that for me right now without having any other medical information, the significance of that to me is that the officers should have stopped, if they felt that the custody was appropriate, maintained their position and called for an ambulance or paramedic.

If somebody is complaining that they can't breathe, if you have someone and their legs are dragging behind them, they can't use their legs, they're screaming out in pain, the response to that by a reasonable officer is to call for a paramedic to render aid and to assist, in this case, Freddie, and spinal injuries can cause, you know, I am not a doctor, but I know that spinal injuries cause an inability to breathe. So whether or not that's indicative of the beginning of a spinal injury, I can't answer that. Nobody can answer that until we see -- that's part of the frustration.

CUOMO: That's where there's such a frustration and a push for answers.

Last question to you, Mrs. Koch. There are four concurrent investigations going on. Sometimes you have too many chefs in the kitchen. Do you have concerns about whether or not this is still being driven by the police and why you now hear about five out of the six officers giving statements as early as April 12th but no word about what is in them?

[08:10: 04] KOCH: I am not surprised about that, because there's always an internal affairs investigation that's associated whenever there's a police involved issue, especially when a person like this situation with Freddie is either harmed or dies in custody, so I am not surprised. I am surprised as to whether or not they would give statements, usually they obtain lawyers and make a decision about statements. There's always an internal affairs investigation. The states' attorney's office will always look at these because it's a homicide, and so the state's attorney ultimately is the one who makes the decision to charge or not to charge or how to charge or present it to the grand jury and what charges to present to the grand jury. That is the state process.

The Justice Department so frequently works in conjunction with state agencies and city agencies that I think that they all have a pretty good working relationship and know when not to step on each other's toes and know when to step in and take over, so I think I am comfortable with the idea that the most important thing is that we get to the bottom of this, and I am comfortable with the idea that there will be more than one set of eyes looking at it, and some of those eyes are totally disinterested in anything other than the truth.

CUOMO: And also it raises the suspicion if the feds are involved, the Department of Justice, are they looking at just this incident or to a culture of policing? Obviously, Baltimore's history long and not always so bright in terms of prime levels and police culture.

Mrs. Koch, thank you very much for giving your perspective from the family, and please, if you have a final word, please give it.

KOCH: I just wanted to say that there were issues because the city -- there were some issues that were brought up because there had been so many payouts made on the police brutality cases, so there was an investigation in that regard, and so I know that was going on. For the sake of the family, I just hope that we can get some information, some information that could shed some light on something that is probably one of the most difficult processes that anybody could go through in a lifetime. Thank you for covering this story.

CUOMO: Right. Absolutely. You are referring to the settlement amounts of about $6.3 million. In Maryland, it looks low compared to other states, but this state has a cap of $600,000 and many other states don't, so it's little bit of a deceptive number. But Mrs. Koch, we have to leave the conversation there now.

KOCH: No - actually -

CUOMO: Yes, ma'am. Clarify it if you need to.

KOCH: I just want to say -- thank you.

CUOMO: Thank care. Alisyn?

KOCH: I'm sorry. I wanted to say the cap was $200,000, not $600,000.

CUOMO: $200,000, not $600,000. So it's even lower. Thank you very much, Mrs. Koch.

KOCH: Yes, yes, yes.

CUOMO: Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Satellites are always tricky, as we know, but it's helpful to have some answers there.

The family of Michael Brown expected today to file a wrongful death suit against the city of Ferguson, Missouri. The unarmed black teenager was shot by a white officer, as you know, Darren Wilson, last August. A grand jury did not charge Wilson in Brown's death, prompting violent protests there. A federal reporter later found the officer was within his rights and training to shoot Michael Brown.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Given the stories that we just highlighted, race relations very well could be an issue front and center for the women following in Eric Holder's footsteps. The full Senate is set to vote today on Loretta Lynch's long-delayed nomination as the next attorney general.

CNN's Michelle Kosinski live at the White House. Good morning, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Michaela. Can you believe it? This is actually happening today, at least we expect it to, after, what, 166 days since Loretta Lynch was nominated to be the next attorney general, and we have been seeing Congress getting a couple things done in the last couple weeks, but this administration has used some colorful ways to describe the delay. I mean, saying that this has taking longer than it took to write the entire Constitution, longer than the last 7 nominees combined, longer than the first 54 nominees combined.

You know, Republicans had tied this confirmation and this weird political twist to the passage of a human trafficking bill that had that controversial abortion language written into it. Well finally, that ended in a compromise last night, passed the Senate, 99-0, only Ted Cruz was not there to vote. He is someone who has vowed to oppose Lynch's confirmation.

She is expected to get a handful of Republican votes, at least five, and Eric Holder, you look at his confirmation way back when, he got 19 Republican votes, and he is somebody that Republicans love to criticize, so that says something about the political climate right now, as if you needed to be reminded.

Chris?

CUOMO: As if. Michelle, thank you very much.

Saudi airstrikes keep pounding southern Yemen and once defiant Houthi rebels are now calling for peace talks. All of this on land as tensions build offshore as U.S. and Iranian warships get set to come into conflict off of Yemen's coast.

CNN's Becky Anderson is live for us in Abu Dhabi.

Becky?

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chris, the Saudis insist that this action is absolutely consistent with the end of what was the month- long operation (INAUDIBLE) storm phase 1, as it were, and operation renewal of hope announced a couple of days ago, phase 2, which they say is part political and part military.

[08:15:06] These airstrikes, Riyadh says, are to protect and continue to protect civilians from militia. We know that what is going on the ground, a huge humanitarian crisis. And behind the scenes, the Saudis say all willing stakeholders should be and now working on the implementation of U.N. Resolution 2216.

It's not just in the air or on the ground, that things are tense, complicated, nuanced, however you want to call it, it's also in the waters off Yemen that things are getting a little bit messy. Witness what could be the impending showdown between the U.S. warships entering the Gulf of Aden led by the U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, and an approaching flotilla of Iranian cargo and military ships.

Now, U.S. officials are telling us the mission there for them is to monitor Iranian cargo vessels that just could deliver arms to Houthi rebels. The question at this stage, will the U.S. navy actually move to block the Iranian ships from entering Yemeni waters.

Alisyn, if we need reminding why this is a complicated calculation for Washington, remember, Iran and other world powers meeting for a second day of nuclear talks in Vienna today, seeking to finalize a deal by June 30th. The (INAUDIBLE) of what is going on with Yemen genuinely not just for a regional audience -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA,: Absolutely, and we'll raise all of those issues with a former ambassador to Yemen who is coming up momentarily.

Thanks so much, Becky.

Well, former CIA director David Petraeus expecting to plead guilty today. The former four-star general admitting he leaked classified information to his biographer turned mistress.

Let's go live to CNN justice correspondent Pamela Brown.

Pam, so what do we expect at the sentencing?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: We can expect it to be a very quick proceeding, Alisyn. The four-star general is expected to arrive for his sentencing in Charlotte, North Carolina, today at 2:00 p.m. The former CIA director struck a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor charge for providing top secret classified information with this biographer and former lover, Paula Broadwell. Court records show that Petraeus had lied multiple times with federal agents investigating case, but he was never charged for that.

Critics have been quick to pounce on the Justice Department for not going after Petraeus more, saying that the former CIA director was given special treatment. The married general's fall from grace, as you recall, began with his affair with Broadwell, while he was the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Broadwell was a former major in the Army reserves, is writing a book on Petraeus. And according to court documents, Petraeus gave her eight black books full of classified information regarding covert officers, war strategy and intelligence capabilities and other national defense information.

Today, the government is expected to ask for two years probation, and a $40,000 fine -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: Pamela, you couldn't write a movie script that could match this. I mean, it's such a stunning story.

BROWN: That's right.

PERERIA: All right. Thanks so much for that.

Quite a failure of security at the Houston home of former president, George H.W. Bush. A new report from the Department Security reveals that the alarm stopped working in September of 2013, and was not fixed for more than a year. A Secret Service expert warned in 2010 that the system was likely to fail, however, officials rejected requests to replace it. The agency says it's already taken steps to address the issue.

CUOMO: Have rebels in Yemen finally been broken? That's the question this morning. And what may happen when Iranian ships and U.S. ships come within range of each other? We're going to take a closer look at the standoff at sea and possible repercussions. CAMEROTA: Also, do you know somebody struggling with infertility? Chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is hear to talk about a medical breakthrough that could be a game changer.

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[08:22:23] CAMEROTA: Saudi Arabia hitting Houthi rebels in Yemen with a new round of airstrikes this morning, and there's still an intense standoff between the U.S. and Iran at sea.

Joining is the former U.S. ambassador to Yemen and the executive vice president at the Arab Gulf States Institute, Stephen Seche.

Mr. Ambassador, thanks for being with us this morning.

STEPHEN SECHE, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO YEMEN: Good morning, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: How do you see what's going on in Yemen this morning? Have these Saudi airstrikes really beaten back the Houthi rebels?

SECHE: It's hard to imagine they will have anymore success with the second round of air strikes than in the first. And I think the first went on for nearly a month, as you know, caused enormous physical and structural damage to Yemen, didn't really blunt the approach of the Houthis into Aden, or in areas of the south.

So, I think what they are trying to do is redirect their strikes more towards areas in Taiz and Aden down in the south, see if they have more luck. But I suspect that this is going to very quickly, if not already, approach a point of diminishing returns, where they're getting a lot less product than really are going to get criticism for doing that kind of damage to Yemen and its infrastructure that already has occurred.

CAMEROTA: It was hard to frankly interpret the messages yesterday. They put out the statement basically saying mission accomplished. They've said, we met our military objective.

Let me read to you some of the things they said, that they had already achieved protection of Yemen from takeover by the Houthis, they said they achieved protecting their own country, Saudi Arabia, and neighboring countries, and they claim to have presented the flow of weapons into Yemen and to have protected the legitimate government of Yemen.

I mean, most of these things actually don't seem to be set or certainly decisively achieved. I mean, let's take it one by one. They haven't really protected Yemen by takeover from the Houthis, have they?

SECHE: Not at all, and I think one objective they may claim to have achieved is to have destroyed much of the ballistic missile stock that the Houthis may have acquired, so that they felt they weren't going to be under attack from many of those weapons. And that was probably the element of success. I think we all breathed the sigh of relief when the announced the end

of the Decisive Storm. And I think the White House has been clear that it's now looking very clearly at trying to move away from a military operation stage into a negotiation phase so that we can get the parties back to the table and really try to come up with an inclusive political transition that will bring this conflict to a close.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about how likely that is, because reportedly, the Houthis are looking for peace talks. Do you believe those reports? And how possible is success here?

[08:25:00] SECHE: Well, I believe the Houthis will accept talks, but their conditions maybe a bit hard to reach at the moment. I think the Houthis want to see an end to the Saudi air strikes, and that's something we all think would be a good idea, and they want to lift the embargo, which maybe a little bit more difficult, given the fact at the U.N. Security Council resolution, and the Saudis have their own conditions, which is pretty much abject surrender by the Houthis, which are going to be also hard to accomplish. So, both parties need I think to find middle ground that's going to give reasonable expectations that they can accept the conditions set by the other party.

CAMEROTA: Mr. Ambassador, what do you make of what's going on in the Gulf of Aden? Some call it a standoff, some call it the game of chicken, but it's U.S. warships and Iranian warships or cargo ships, and they appear to be at an impasse.

SECHE: Well, I think what we are seeing in the Gulf of Aden now is a lot of posturing and political messaging, Alisyn. I don't think either side, the U.S. or Iran, really wants to pick a fight in the Gulf of Aden, not at the moment when we're really working in over drive to try to get a closure on the nuclear deal. That is the big price. I don't think for the Iranians, Yemen really represents much other than chance to put a stick into Saudi's eye.

So, I think we're really going to try to keep this at bay. The risk, of course, is miscalculation. When you have warships steaming in close proximity to one another, that becomes a real concern, and I think also races the question of who is in command of the Iranian flotilla, if it's the Iranian army, they can be more professional. If it's the RGC, the revolutionary guard corps, they're much more provocative when they do operate in proximity to American warships.

So, we need to be attentive to that element. I don't think either side is going to use this as a way to get into a fight at the moment. It would be really detrimental to the larger goal and the larger prize, which is the nuclear deal.

CAMEROTA: Mr. Ambassador, let me show you a new CNN poll, and it shows what Americans believe is the most serious threat to the U.S. And number one, they believe 87 percent is ISIS. At 72 percent, they think it's Iran. And then 66 percent, North Korea, 62 percent Russia, and 54 percent China.

Do those -- do those seem to be accurate to you? Are those fears in that order justified?

SECHE: Well, I think one of the things I would ask about that, ISIS tends to be a headline grabber, but it has not yet keep demonstrated a real interest in moving around the way al Qaeda, say, in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen franchise, has already demonstrated the desire to conduct operations in the United States and elsewhere. That for me is the real threat.

And I think the ability remains in al Qaeda's hands in Yemen, because their infrastructure is intact, they have more room to move around, they have a safe haven is carved out pretty well while attention is being paid to the struggle with the Houthis, and therefore, I think AQAP becomes in my judgment anyway a much higher priority in that list of risks you've just enumerated.

CAMEROTA: OK. Ambassador Stephen Seche, thanks so much for being on NEW DAY.

SECHE: Thank you, Alisyn. My pleasure.

CAMEROTA: OK.

Well, moving on. For couples struggling can infertility, there may be a medical breakthrough. We'll talk to chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Also, singer/songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins is going to talk about how she got pregnant at 50 years old.

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