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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Three More Suspects Arrested in Boston Bombing Case; Interview With Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani
Aired May 01, 2013 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, everyone.
Welcome to a live roundtable edition of A.C. 360. I'm Anderson Cooper.
All week long, we are going to be joined throughout this hour at this table by chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, and Amy Holmes, anchor for The Blaze TV, and every night a different guest is going to help join in our fifth chair, someone with a perspective that makes the conversation that much more interesting. We will tell you who tonight's special guest is in just a few minutes. I'm very excited about him, about being here.
You can join the conversation as well by tweeting with hashtag AC360.
Tonight, a whole new string of developments in the Boston bombings, three new suspects. Former New York Mayor and former federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani is going to join us as well for that.
Also, the hunger strike at Guantanamo, prisoners being strapped down, force-fed. Whatever you think of Gitmo or the inmates, it's making people ask very tough questions. Plus, guns, not just the political price some lawmakers are paying for blocking tighter gun laws, but some plain craziness at one school in the name of safety. You will not believe what administrators there did.
But, first, a very full day in the Boston bombing case, three new suspects, friends of the surviving alleged bomber, two charged with obstructing justice, destroying evidence, the other one with lying to investigators. That was the first big development today, followed by many, many others just even the last couple hours, including a revelation of a phone conversation between the older alleged bomber and his widow shortly after the bombing.
Let's talk about that. Our correspondent is going to join us shortly.
What do you make of the case against these three, two Kazakh students and one U.S. citizen?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, it reminds me that one question we should never ask is, can people really be that stupid? Because they really -- if these allegations are true, the idea that these guys, given the pressure in the country...
COOPER: Explain to folks what they're accused of...
TOOBIN: OK.
COOPER: ... because it wasn't help before the bombing, as far as we know. It was help after the alleged bombing.
TOOBIN: And you make a very important point, which is there's no evidence at all that these three were conspirators to do the bombing. There is no allegation that they were involved with the brothers.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Although there is an allegation that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said about a month ago, I know how to make a bomb.
TOOBIN: Correct.
And there is a reference to that. But certainly they're not charged with anything in connection with helping or even knowing about the bombing in advance. But the core allegations in today's case are that these three were friends of the younger brother at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, and they were somehow -- they became aware that he was a suspect and they were in communication with him by text message and by phone.
COOPER: Right. After the photos were released by authorities, one of them texted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, said, wow, you look like the bomber. Tsarnaev texts back saying, LOL, laugh out loud. By the way, by my place, you can take whatever you want.
TOOBIN: Right. And they then did.
They went to his room and they took out his backpack which had firecrackers with the explosives removed.
COOPER: Fireworks with the powder removed.
TOOBIN: Correct.
And then Vaseline, which is a sort of weird aspect to this whole thing, because they say, apparently they knew from Tsarnaev that Vaseline is used in the making of bombs, something that I think most people are not aware of.
AMY HOLMES, "REAL NEWS": It's not general knowledge, no.
TOOBIN: I certainly wasn't aware of it.
So, then they took the backpack...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Also his laptop computer.
(CROSSTALK)
TOOBIN: Laptop computer, and they dumped them. They threw them in a dumpster. They were then interviewed by the authorities. One of them is accused of lying to the authorities, and they have now been arrested for obstruction of justice and for making false statements to the FBI.
COOPER: It does raise all sorts of questions about what they knew and when they knew it, because again, Vaseline, unless it was in the bag -- do we know, was it in the bag with the fireworks?
TOOBIN: That's not clear from the complaint. I don't know.
COOPER: Because that seems important. If they went and grabbed this Vaseline, you would think that that means Tsarnaev had a conversation with them saying, get the Vaseline.
(CROSSTALK)
TOOBIN: Well, it probably means that anyway, because they are accused of being aware that Vaseline was made for using -- for making bombs. How else would they know that if they hadn't talk to him?
I'm sorry I interrupted you.
HOLMES: Oh, no.
Yes, in the affidavit, it says that they saw the Vaseline, and they recognized that that was for bomb-making purposes. And I think for most of us, that's not general knowledge.
COOPER: We have exclusively video that Susan Candiotti got. We're going to show it to you. It's in the table here, but we're going to show it you full screen in a moment.
Now, this is video taken on May 19, after authorities have released the photos of the suspect.
TOOBIN: April 19.
COOPER: Excuse me, April 19, right.
Authorities have released photos of the suspect, the authorities go to a house that they believe Tsarnaev is actually at. This is the house that the two Kazakh students are living at. And this was taken by a neighbor. You hear them yelling. They have surrounded the house, and you hear them yelling for Tsarnaev to come out of the house. He wasn't at the house. But let's watch this video and listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God, do you think it's him?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... your hands up. No one will get hurt.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stay right there, OK? Do not move.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, come out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, you are being arrested now. Come out with your hands up and elevate your hands.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: It's a little hard to hear. But you hear him saying, come out with your hands up.
Again, that's when they first apprehended these two Kazakh students.
I want to bring in our Susan Candiotti with more on today's developments.
Susan, we're also learning about -- that the wife of Tamerlan Tsarnaev allegedly called him after police released an image. Do we know what she said to him?
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No, we don't know.
And that's, of course, what investigators are very concerned about. That's what our sources are telling us. She called him. We know that much. What did she say? The question, of course, did she warn him? Did she say, they're looking for you?
That's the thing that investigators of course are concentrating on, because, of course, if she had, you know, she could be considered to be an accessory. But it's far too early to know. We just don't know the answers to any of that, except to say that we keep learning that she is cooperating. That's what her lawyer is saying. She keeps having these meetings with them. So...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Do we know that for a fact? Because, early on, her lawyers put out this press release and made a statement saying that she's cooperating as best as she can, which doesn't really mean she's fully cooperating. Does she -- I mean...
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It seems to me that she must be, because they're going in and out of her house all the time.
TOOBIN: Not necessarily. They might have a search warrant. They might have a subpoena. So, it's not entirely...
HOLMES: Because there was negotiating over getting that DNA.
AMANPOUR: And what about this idea of a wife calling her husband? Is there anything privileged about that? Is there any -- is it always incriminating?
(CROSSTALK) TOOBIN: It is privileged. It depends a lot on what was said.
And, of course, one party to this conversation is dead. She has a privilege to decline to say what went on. No one will be in a position to say she's lying, because no one else knows what was in that conversation.
But a lot depends on what was said. If she simply said, what the heck is going on, like a wife might say to a husband, certainly there's nothing wrong with that. If she said, they're after you, can I help you escape, that's something else.
HOLMES: I have a quick question, Susan, just for a little bit of clarification.
The affidavit doesn't actually address the laptop, and whether or not our officials have recovered it.
COOPER: That's a good point.
HOLMES: Do we know anything about that?
COOPER: Do they have it?
CANDIOTTI: Yes, we just don't have it confirmed whether in fact they recovered the laptop.
(CROSSTALK)
CANDIOTTI: ... we can say for certain.
TOOBIN: "The New York Times" is reporting that the authorities do have the laptop, but that's just...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: The affidavit does say that they recovered the backpack with the empty fireworks in the landfill, which...
TOOBIN: Yes.
COOPER: That was that landfill that they're searching for.
CANDIOTTI: That's right.
COOPER: I also want to bring in someone who knows what it takes to prosecute terror suspects and also lead a major city through a terror attack.
Former New York Mayor, federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, he joins me now.
Great to have you here at the roundtable.
RUDOLPH GIULIANI (R), FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Good to be with you. COOPER: What do you make of where this case is now, these new arrests today?
GIULIANI: Well, what I find very striking about the complaint is that if the timing is correct in the complaint, these three men could have prevented the killing of officer Collier.
He was killed at 11:00 that night. They were in that apartment between 6:00 and 7:00. Sometime shortly thereafter, they realized that Tsarnaev was a -- was one of the bombers. That's when they decided to remove the items in order to help him.
So had they reported it, officer Collier today would be alive. Also, a prosecutor could have a pretty interesting theory that they're this was a conspiracy to obstruct justice. It was a conspiracy to help their friend flee.
A rational expectation in fleeing a situation like this is violence will take place. So, I would put those -- the murder, the shooting of the second police officer and the kidnapping as overt acts as part of that conspiracy.
COOPER: Would you do that in order to get them to cooperate? Or would you do that in order to actually to prosecute them on that?
GIULIANI: Well, I would actually prosecute on them if I could develop the evidence, and if they would like to cooperate, then we could talk about a lesser charge.
But this is more serious than it originally appeared, I mean, because there's a man dead, a man kidnapped, and another man seriously injured as a result of their joining this conspiracy to obstruct justice. Had they done what a decent citizen would have done, it's quite possible officer Collier would be alive. Problem, the other officer wouldn't have been shot and the man wouldn't have been kidnapped.
COOPER: What's also so incredible to me about this is, only one of them is a U.S. citizen, so these two Kazakh guys who are here under -- because the United States has graciously allowed them into this country are now conspiring or allegedly conspiring with a guy who's committed this bombing.
It's just -- it's idiotic, beyond just morally reprehensible.
GIULIANI: It's outrageous, actually. It really is outrageous.
TOOBIN: Yes.
I actually think I was probably guilty of viewing them at first as knuckleheads. This is a lot worse than being knuckleheads. I mean, I think Rudy makes a very good point involving the death of Collier, but, also, just the idea that you're here through the good offices of the United States and...
HOLMES: Well, actually, not through the good offices. One of the students, he was not supposed to come back. And he was allowed back into the country.
But, Mayor, I have a question about these two Kazakh students. What do you make of the fact that they so enthusiastically cooperated in trying to destroy this evidence? They took a text that looks pretty cryptic. You can go to my apartment, take whatever you want. What is that, a can of soda? Oh, no, it's a laptop that might have information about a bombing.
It just -- it seems so peculiar.
GIULIANI: Yes, I would use that as evidence of the conspiracy.
They basically joined, both by words and then certainly by actions, they joined a conspiracy to help these two guys flee. And that conspiracy, a conspiracy to flee a violent crime like this, extraordinarily violent crime like this, you would anticipate in a flight, you would anticipate violence.
You would anticipate that these men were going to go down shooting. So there's some responsibility for these -- to these three men for the killing of officer Collier, the shooting of the other officer and the kidnapping.
All of that could be anticipated, reasonably anticipated when you assist a terrorist who had just done a bombing, killing a child, to flee, rather than help the authorities find that guy.
COOPER: And add on top of that what one of them has now reportedly told authorities, that, weeks ago, perhaps even a month before this, this suspect had said, I know how to make a bomb.
Mr. Mayor, stay with us. We have got to take a quick break.
Joining us, our special guest coming up, one of the best storytellers around, new to CNN. We will be right back. We will tell you who it is.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Hey. Welcome back.
You're looking at a live shot of Abu Dhabi, where it's about a quarter past 6:00 in the morning, a whole new day starting there. Welcome to our viewers there and around the world on CNN International and here in the United States.
Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani is with us, Christiane Amanpour, Jeffrey Toobin, Amy Holmes, and in our fifth chair, Anthony Bourdain, chef, amazing writer, host of "PARTS UNKNOWN" here on CNN Sundays 9:00 Eastern.
And it's good to have you on the program. Thanks for being here.
ANTHONY BOURDAIN, "PARTS UNKNOWN": Good to be here.
COOPER: How -- you have been following no doubt the bombings in Boston. What do you make of it?
BOURDAIN: Yes.
It does not appear that we're dealing with criminal masterminds here by a long shot. But as far as these -- this latest three, I think our former mayor put it very concisely. They're looking at, at the very least, obstruction charges. And it doesn't look good for them.
COOPER: Yes.
You had a question for the mayor. Go ahead.
AMANPOUR: I did, actually.
Mr. Mayor, I keep coming back to this idea that, on social media, there were clear signs that at least Tamerlan had these tendencies. On his YouTube page, there was terrorist play lists. On his Facebook Russian page, there were all these jihadi videos.
And I just wonder what law enforcement can do and should do to really seek and look at these for signs before they commit the crime, not like we all did, after they commit the crime.
GIULIANI: Right. And it's a shame that it happens that way.
What you prefer to see was that that warning from the Russians was taken more seriously and they were put under very heavy surveillance, and particularly after he came back from Russia. Going to Russia should have meant going to Dagestan. He wasn't going to Russia. No one from Chechnya or Dagestan is going to Moscow to go to Moscow Symphony.
He was going to Russia in order to go to Dagestan. The minutes he did that, it should have set off alarm bells that, my goodness, maybe this thing the Russians gave us is really pretty serious. We better take a much better look at the guy.
AMANPOUR: Right.
GIULIANI: And they should have been all over him. At least that is what I think.
AMANPOUR: Well, yes. And why on earth didn't they? If they had interviewed him, there was these signs on the Facebook -- I asked Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, today about this. And he said, believe me, if there was an algorithm that could detect terrorists, we would sure as heck use it.
And they're hoping that sometime in the future there might be some kind of better cooperation or better sign of what he called the evil acts before they happen.
TOOBIN: But, Rudy, let me follow up in this way.
You -- when you were originally fighting terrorism, we were talking about al Qaeda. Now we're talking, it appears -- and obviously we don't know this for sure -- individuals acting, if not entirely on their own, you know, very much as free agents who are just dedicated to the evil cause.
How do you deal with that, when you just have random individuals?
GIULIANI: Much harder. Much, much harder.
Chris Christie told me years ago when he was doing the investigation of the Fort Hood terrorists who were going to attack Fort Hood -- luckily, they were stopped. He said, boy, this -- I fear this more than al Qaeda, more than these concerted plots, because these people are much harder to find, because you don't have a lot of international communications, you don't have a lot of international travel. You don't get the benefit of our intelligence, our spies that have infiltrated some of these organizations.
Now, having said that, the question that Christiane asked me, in this case, we did have the benefit of some of that, and we missed it. And I think we really better go take a good look at just exactly how we missed it. This was a little better than we should usually expect from sort of let's call them homegrown terrorists. We got more warnings, more information, more international travel than we normally should expect to get.
COOPER: You know, it's interesting. There's this new CNN poll.
And, Anthony, I'm wondering about your thinking on this, because there's a new CNN/ORC poll that says, that even now in the post-9/11 era, in the wake of the Boston bombings, people are significantly less willing to give up civil liberties to curb terrorism than they were nearly 20 years ago after Oklahoma City.
BOURDAIN: Well, I think particularly in the light of a subject Christiane brought up, where, really, we're talking about thought crime here. We're talking about using social media as a predictor of future criminal acts.
Let's face it. Amazon knows more about you than the FBI is allowed to even ask without a court order. Google knows.
(LAUGHTER)
AMANPOUR: Right. That's my point.
BOURDAIN: The Internet is a very scary place.
COOPER: But do you really want the Internet to be policed like that?
AMANPOUR: To be honest, yes.
TOOBIN: Oh, come on, really.
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: To be honest, in this case -- I'm really sorry, and I can see you all laughing. But we are all, us law-abiding citizens...
TOOBIN: We're not laughing. We're appalled.
AMANPOUR: OK. Fine.
TOOBIN: All right.
(LAUGHTER)
AMANPOUR: We're all asked to go through amazing restrictive security searches in many, many instances in our life.
All I'm saying is, obviously not policed willy-nilly, but if the law enforcement knew about this guy, why would they not have gone on and looked at what he was doing online, particularly...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: But, Mr. Mayor, Let me ask you about what Boston did. What do you make of Boston's reaction, now, from a law enforcement standpoint, essentially kind of shutting the city down? They shut down the cab service, the transportation service, going house to house, knocking on people's doors, entering people's homes.
Is that something you could have ever done in New York City?
GIULIANI: First of all, I'm not going to second-guess it. I think Boston handled the situation from the moment that bombing started until the end brilliantly.
And maybe you can second-guess one or two things here. Probably much harder to do in New York, because we're a much bigger city. You're talking about a city of 700,000, 800,000 people, as opposed to a city 10 times larger than that.
So, I don't know that that could have been done in New York. I understand exactly why they did it. They had that terrible shoot-out the night before. They had no idea where these guys were. What they didn't want to see was a shoot-out in the street in which some more children would be killed, or some more innocent people should be killed. So, they erred on the side of caution.
So, I sure as check wouldn't second-guess it. And the result is, thank God no one got hurt. But that kind of underscores what these three defendants could have prevented, if. Instead of acting like criminals, they had acted like decent people, and gotten this information to the FBI or the Boston police immediately, it's quite possible these two guys could have been arrested before that police officer was shot and killed.
COOPER: We should also just point out a couple headlines on Benghazi in Libya right now.
And you were recently in Libya, so I want to hear your thoughts.
But the FBI has now put out they're seeking three men in the Libya in connection with their investigation. They're saying that basically they're not suspects, they're persons of interest. They don't know what role they might have had, though I think one of them is photographed with a gun. They actually put out the photos, and I think we can put those up.
TOOBIN: This in the murder of...
(CROSSTALK)
TOOBIN: ... ambassador.
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: They're being sought as witnesses, potentially, rather than agitators.
COOPER: Right. They were on the scene of the attacks. Their identities are not known. And it's not known what role, if any, they had in it. But they have put out this alert for them.
What -- how do you find Libya? You were just recently there.
BOURDAIN: I found it a surprisingly hopeful and inspiring place.
COOPER: Hopeful, really?
BOURDAIN: I was really taken aback by the young people I met who had -- who had, on a Thursday, thought that we're going to be stuck with Gadhafi forever, on a Friday, found out that -- saw the revolution had started, flew back to their country from Montreal, from England, built weapons out of hair dryers and crossbows, fought Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails.
They're building. They're very frank about their aspirations. They know it's going to be a mess. They're building a country from scratch where all authority came from one man. They're realistic that, yes, there are plenty of people out there who would probably wish to do us harm, that it will take them five, maybe 10 years for them to get their act together.
But I think we certainly did the right thing by helping. I think to stand -- I think the people who say that we were better off with Gadhafi in power are completely divorced from reality. And it would have been unconscionable for us to stand back.
I was really moved by these -- we can't force democracy down the throats of Libyans, or Syrians, for that matter. But I met a lot of people for whom freedom meant the ability to speak more freely, enjoy a Western-style hamburger, enjoy some of the things that they see the rest of the world enjoying. And...
(CROSSTALK)
TOOBIN: Did they feel that they have paid a price in chaos, as many people feel in Egypt, for example, where you have an authoritarian overruled, but things went downhill? How does that compare?
BOURDAIN: I think it's a different situation than Egypt.
HOLMES: What about the rise of the black flags, al Qaeda in Benghazi and some of that that we have seen?
BOURDAIN: There -- what I heard from a lot of the militia guys I spoke to, most of whom were very young and were not military people before they took up arms against Gadhafi, is, look, we got rid of Gadhafi. These guys we can take care of in time.
There was a sense of real unhappiness when there were assassinations and kidnappings going on when we were there. The feeling is very much that there are people who want chaos, who do not want us to succeed. They are well aware of all of the dark forces, as they say, that stand in the way of a coherent society.
And I think they're realistic about the prospects of how long it might take. I think we need to be realistic as well.
COOPER: Mr. Mayor, what do you make of the investigation so far into Benghazi?
GIULIANI: Well, I think the investigation is taking a terribly long time.
There are a lot of confusion at the very beginning, the FBI getting in there after three weeks, a lot of things missed that reporters found, a lot of questions unanswered. When you don't investigate a case from the very beginning, when a crime scene is all chaos, it's very, very hard to reconstruct, reconstruct it later. And, of course, it's a long time now, and no one's being held to answer for it.
(CROSSTALK)
BOURDAIN: Well, because there's not much of a government there to work with. They're hanging on by their fingertips. It's a do-it- yourself situation.
HOLMES: But it's still appalling...
(CROSSTALK)
HOLMES: ... that "The New York Times" can talk to one of the people who helped organize the attack, but the FBI can't.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: That CNN personnel could go into the burned-out consulate and find all this evidence laying around is pretty stunning.
(CROSSTALK)
BOURDAIN: It's groups of militias controlling different territories, cooperating, and not cooperating depending on the situation, people in fatigues without any official status directing traffic.
When you go to the airport, you leave your handgun before you go through the -- and take your clip, so that -- as sort of like a coat check so that you can pick your gun up when you leave.
I was more charmed and hopeful than dismayed by this. I see people trying to make -- seriously trying to make a go of a really post-apocalyptic situation.
COOPER: We have to take a quick break.
Coming up, more with the mayor, the president's promise to revisit closing down the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, a major hunger strike happening there right now, people being force-fed, more than 100 people so far.
We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday morning there. Back in a moment. Anthony Bourdain is in the fifth chair. You can join the conversation by tweeting with the hashtag AC360.
We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Welcome back. About half of the 166 detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention facility are participating in a hunger strike over complaints about how they're being treated. President Obama says the facility should be closed and the Congress wouldn't let that happen, but he promised to revisit the issue. Here's what the president said at the White House yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it's critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe. It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: He also said that, of course, during his re-election campaign. And it hasn't happened so far.
BOURDAIN: I'd like to see him make a more forceful case here. A little more lurid language, which...
AMANPOUR: And it's really bad. I mean, yesterday he also said, "I don't want these individuals to die." And to that end there are some 25 and counting prisoners on hunger strike who have been designated force -- to be force fed. COOPER: About half. It's actually like 100.
AMANPOUR: It is more than that, but 25 or so of those are being force fed. And the way it was described to me by lawyers and by medical experts today is that they are strapped down to a chair, forcibly strapped down by personnel in riot gear, on occasion. They are then, with a nose up their -- a tube up their nose down their throat, into their stomach. It's really agonizing. It takes two hours to pump down the food supplement.
I spoke to a doctor today. Doctors should do no harm. He also said we should also respect the rights of these people. They are lucid; they're conscious, and they don't have to take this.
TOOBIN: What do you think we should do about Guantanamo?
GIULIANI: Well, I don't think we should close it. I can't imagine where you would put these people. I can't imagine where you could put these people that wouldn't endanger the community in which they were put. I wouldn't want them in or around New York. I think there has to be an option.
In this kind of war that we're in, we're not -- we're not in a war with a state. We're in a war with an ideology. These people are vicious, horrible terrorists. Look at the people we've released there. A significant number of them have been released, and then engaged in killing Americans after...
TOOBIN: But Mayor, this is the problem -- this is the problem...
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: ... they haven't been charged. They haven't been tried.
TOOBIN: You say they're vicious killers. But you know, certainly, some of them will be tried under military tribunals, and they will be proven to be vicious killers.
But what about that significant group of people -- and it is a significant number -- who we describe as vicious killers but we don't have enough evidence to try them? Do we just keep them there forever with no charges?
GIULIANI: Well, you have to accept that during a time of war. If we had a group of Nazis during the Second World War, we wouldn't be -- wouldn't be worried about, are we going to try them, how are we going to try them, what kind of evidence do we have?
COOPER: But we did...
GIULIANI: Well, we did try some. We didn't try others. We held them in -- we held them in camps.
AMANPOUR: By the logic of the war on terror, it's a never-ending war. But the logic of the war on terror, this is a never-ending war. These people have not been charged.
HOLMES: President Obama...
AMANPOUR: Some of them can't even be tried because they're tortured.
HOLMES: If even President Obama will not release these folks -- we have 86 cleared for release. No country will take them. Add to that a recidivism rate of 15 to 20 percent. And particularly after the Boston bombing, I don't think anybody wants to roll the dice.
AMANPOUR: Maybe they don't want to roll the dice. But the -- even this week, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee has written a letter to the national security chief and has said, it is time to use executive branch authority to close down part of it and to have a review and to transfer the 86 detainees who have been cleared for transfer.
TOOBIN: Let's be clear, too, that it is not up to President Obama to close Guantanamo at this point. As a result of the failed effort to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City, Congress passed a law forbidding the closure of Guantanamo. So even if Obama wanted to, which he clearly does, he doesn't have the legal authority to close it.
(CROSSTALK)
HUGHES: ... an absolute debacle. He was acquitted on more than 280 charges, only charged in one in civilian court. I think that the administration looks at that, and again, do you really want to try do...
AMANPOUR: There are so many who have come and been convicted and were serving life sentences. Much more have actually paid the price. Life in prison.
HUGHES: The shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, they pled guilty.
AMANPOUR: ... the al-Shabab (ph) guy. All the others who have been tried have gone to life sentence.
COOPER: What about a super max facility?
BOURDAIN: Why no confidence in super max?
GIULIANI: Why should -- why should we have that burden in the United States? It makes no sense. And I'm not sure the state in which those facilities are located would want them. Look, foreign countries don't want them. Why would we want them? I mean, the reality is, these are exceedingly...
AMANPOUR: The president of Yemen wants them back.
BOURDAIN: The answer to that. Regardless of the...
GIULIANI: These are exceedingly dangerous people. The war is still going on. Christiane says, well, it will never end. It will end when they stop attacking us. We're not in control on this. This is really not our war on them. Boston showed us, it's their war on us.
So the reality is, this facility has worked to keep us safe. There are no other alternatives. Bush and Obama have both tried other alternatives, tried to get countries to take them, states to take them. Nobody wants them.
COOPER: But do you ever see an end to -- to the so-called war on terror or whatever you want to call it? Do you see an end to international terrorism?
GIULIANI: Of course I see it an end to it. Nobody ever saw an end to communism until it ended. So yes, there will be an end at some point to terrorism.
AMANPOUR: When al Qaeda surrenders.
GIULIANI: When they stop mounting these attacks on us in various parts of the world. There will come a time when this ends. I don't know when that is. It may be sooner than people think. It may be longer than people think. But until then, the paramount interest we should have: the safety of the American people, not the convenience of these people.
Look, they have three choices, rights? They can starve. They can eat food or they can be fed the way they're being fed. It's their choice.
TOOBIN: Can I ask a question about -- can I ask a question about the hunger strike? I'm sorry if this is kind of a ghoulish question, but I honestly don't know the answer. And it seems like the president didn't know the answer either. What is the humane thing to do with the hunger striker? Is it to let them die? Because they will die. Or do you force feed them? What do you do?
AMANPOUR: The American Medical Association and the World Medical Association says that force feeding people who are conscious, who are able to make a decision, who understand the consequences of it should not be force fed in prison. American courts have, in fact, ruled in the past that, yes, prison authorities can do this, because they need to be able to keep law and order. But it violates a physician's code of conduct. And furthermore, if we go back...
TOOBIN: So Christiane, you let them die? I mean...
AMANPOUR: This is not about dying necessarily.
HUGHES: That is their rationally...
AMANPOUR: You may hate this, but this is about their conditions. And you may hate who they are, Mr. Mayor. I fully understand that. But this is about their conditions and it goes right back to...
GIULIANI: Their conditions are better than the conditions in 95 percent of American prisons.
(CROSSTALK)
GIULIANI: Their conditions are better than the conditions from whence they came. They haven't had it so good.
AMANPOUR: They -- they have said...
GIULIANI: They get better food. They have better accommodations.
TOOBIN: I've been there twice.
GIULIANI: Some of them have exercise equipment better than the attorney general has.
TOOBIN: Rudy is right about this.
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: That's fine.
TOOBIN: No. The conditions are not the problem. The conditions are perfectly...
AMANPOUR: ... is imprisonment indefinitely.
TOOBIN: That's the problem. That's where we have to draw the distinction here.
AMANPOUR: That's what I'm saying. That is actually what I'm saying.
TOOBIN: But I think the -- it's not really conditions. The conditions itself are perfectly adequate for a prison and, in fact, are probably better than most prisons in the United States.
The problem is the hopelessness of their situation with no trial, no deadline, no sentence, just indefinite detention. That's why they're hunger striking.
AMANPOUR: And I think this is important, too, because I think it goes to your point, Mr. Mayor, of constant terrorism and acts against the United States. You know that way back in Northern Ireland during the hunger strikes when Bobby Sands died, and then another nine died. You know, the British were really thrilled.
(CROSSTALK)
AMANPOUR: Yes. The British were thrilled about the way Margaret Thatcher dealt with this. But this was the second biggest recruiting tool for the IRA. The first biggest being Bloody Sunday, when British forces massacred people. And then this was the second biggest. Even people who hated the IRA never forgave the government for allowing these people to die. GIULIANI: I handled -- I handled some of those extradition cases when I was a United States attorney. One very, very famous one where the man had to be returned to Northern Ireland; argued that case in court. Handled it myself for two years. That was in 1986.
At the time I argued that, people were saying, "This will never end. It's been going on for 200 years." Well, we had the -- we had the Good Friday Accords, and it hasn't ended completely, but it's pretty much ended.
So don't be so pessimistic about the fact that this war on terror, terrorist war against us, isn't at some point going to come to an end. They do. They actually do come to an end. We just can't see that when we're in the middle of it, like we couldn't see that in 1986, '87, '88 in Northern Ireland.
AMANPOUR: I would just say one thing. It is a general consensus among those who study the Northern Ireland issue that the Good Friday agreement might have happened earlier, but for the anger and the recruiting tools that these hunger strikes and the way it was dealt with provided.
HUGHES: We have a laundry list of resentments against the west.
(CROSSTALK)
HUGHES: Certainly. If you look at what Osama bin Laden said about his resentments, it was U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. So if we're looking at recruiting tools, frankly, we'd have to go through a list of 100.
AMANPOUR: So you don't think...
BOURDAIN: ... powerful images of people intubated and force fed.
Look, for me, let's put aside the moral...
(CROSSTALK)
BOURDAIN: It's a powerful image in the mind, if nothing else. For me, let's put aside the moral question. Is it good for our country to do this? Clearly, this is -- it is not. It is a recruiting tool where it is going to last for some time. Tactically, we need a Plan B.
COOPER: Mayor, your final word on this.
GIULIANI: I do not believe it's a recruiting tool at all. The reality is, this comes out of a perverted interpretation of the Islamic religion that is very, very commanding in the minds of these people. This is why they're doing it; that's what jihad is all about.
I bet you you can search all this material for these Dagestan terrorists, but you're not going to find a darn thing about -- about Guantanamo. So I think that is an overstated position. I don't think it's a recruiting tool at all. I think it's very, very effective in keeping us safe from people who have been let out of Guantanamo and then gone ahead and killed Americans after we foolishly let them out of Guantanamo.
COOPER: Mayor Giuliani, it's great to have you on the program, as always. Thanks for being here.
Just ahead, the fallout on the failed Senate gun control bill; where the battle may be headed next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Welcome back. It's quarter to 5 in the morning in Budapest in Hungary. That city just waking up. Good morning, everyone.
It's been two weeks since the Senate gun control vote. The fallout is piling up. Tonight, senators who voted against expanding background checks for gun purchases say they are feeling some growing heat. Let's talk about that with our panel.
It was also interesting, because we also had Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania basically blaming political polarization, some of the opposition to this. He said, "In the end, it impassed, because we're so polarized -- politicized. There were some on my side" -- talking about Republicans -- "who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wants to do it."
Do you think that's true?
HUGHES: I'm sure that's true. I'm sure there are some senators who are just, you know, ideologically and for partisan reasons, opposed to the president. But the Republicans also do have their squishes still.
COOPER: You don't think support for gun control is as deep as people say? People cite this 90 percent...
HUGHES: Correct. We've heard that throughout the gun control debate. Ninety percent. Ninety percent support background checks. But even a "Mother Jones" blogger there pointed out that, in fact, gun control is not an intense issue for gun control advocates.
Basically, this support is, like, a mile wide but an inch deep. And Gallup in April, right before this vote, they found out when they asked people what is the most important issue confronting America, only 4 percent said gun control. That was down below North Korea.
COOPER: Where -- it is the people who oppose further background checks are very passionate about it. They may be smaller in number, though.
HUGHES: Very passionate. They are single-issue voters. (CROSSTALK)
TOOBIN: And they also will vote in Republican primaries. These Republican senators -- it didn't even get to the House, but it's even more true in the House -- these Republican senators risk losing their party's nomination if they even think about any voting for any kind of gun control. Even something as seemingly uncontroversial as background checks.
AMANPOUR: You know, I hate to say this, but in countries around the world -- and certainly, we're not preaching to America -- but they have taken some very serious measures.
And I interviewed the former conservative prime minister of Australia, John Howard, who entered office just as there was this huge massacre in Tasmania. A lot of people were killed. And he knew he had to do something. And he's conservative, and there's a gun culture there in parts of Australia.
And so he did this huge buy-back program. He then decided that he would go to a referendum if they didn't agree to have certain gun control measures. And he thought that he win that referendum.
In the end, it all came together. And the fact of the matter is, that there has not been a mass shooting since then.
In England, as well, after Dunblain (ph), they instituted a whole load of new and more robust gun control measures. And there's been no massacres since then.
And in Japan, you can't even buy a handgun. You can buy a shotgun, but in order to do that, it's so stringent, you have to take a mental test. You have to take a written test. You have to go to a shooting range.
BOURDAIN: I spent a lot of time -- look, I'm a blue state guy, but I spent a lot of time in a red state, gun country America. And I spent a lot of time sitting down to dinner with people, who at the end of a meal, you know, Mom opens up the safe, and there's a whole lot of shotguns and hand guns in there. And they all go back and shoot cans. It's a gun culture; it's a culture where, you know, the presence of a weapon in a bar is not a threatening thing. A lot of good, law- abiding people who -- for whom guns run deep as a birthright.
And I think in order to have the discussion we need to have, and to make the changes that we need to have in the law that we would like to see, that we need to have a discussion and reach an agreement. And in order to do that, I think we're going to have to be sensitive to that large group of people out there who are responsible gun owners, who are not lunatic fringe, who ideologically don't agree with Wayne LaPierre as their spokesman. But who will certainly move towards him if they feel threatened by murmurs of even the thought of people taking away their guns or intruding on their traditional lifestyle. There's got to be a middle ground.
(CROSSTALK) HUGHES: Personally for Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. What I find really interesting about this politically is we're seeing Democrats doing the Texas two-step. On the one hand, they're advocating for some more stringent gun control at a national level with Mayor Bloomberg and his (UNINTELLIGIBLE), his organization.
But at the state level, it's just been reported that the Democratic party is looking to recruit pro-gun candidates like Brian Schweitzer. We talked about him during the break. He famously said he had more -- that he has guns than he needs. But not as many as he wants.
COOPER: I want to bring in California's attorney general, Kamala Harris. She's joining us. The governor of California just today signed legislation that will increase funding for confiscating firearms from people who are prohibited by law from owning them.
It's good to have you on the program. Do you still see any momentum for actual change, nationwide, through federal laws?
KAMALA HARRIS, CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL: I absolutely -- I absolutely do. And I think so goes California so goes the rest of the country. What the governor did today, Jerry Brown, is he signed legislation proposed by Senator Mark Leno that would institute common- sense gun safety laws.
And essentially, what we have done is we have put $24 million into an initiative of programs that is about taking guns out of the hands of people who are legally prohibited from owning them. Convicted felons, people who have been found by a court to be mentally ill. And it's just about common-sense approach.
I think, Anderson, that part of the thing that concerns me about this debate is it really is offering a false choice that suggests that you're either in favor of the Second Amendment or in favor of reasonable gun safety laws. We can have both and we can be both. And I think what we've done today in California is a model of that approach. And is something that is leading the nation in terms of what can be done to avoid the kind of gun violence that we are seeing across this country.
TOOBIN: Kamala, you're a very successful politician. What about Anthony's point, though, which I think is so important? Why have Democratic politicians had so much trouble talking to the law-abiding gun owners? There are lots of law-abiding gun owners out there. Why are they so alienated from the idea of gun control?
HARRIS: Well, again, I -- I think it's as simple as pointing out the false choices being presented. It's -- you can be, I am in favor of the Second Amendment. I am in favor of people who are law-abiding citizens having an ability to purchase a firearm.
But when we're talking about something like California's approach to the bill that was passed today, but let's also have laws in place that understand the Second Amendment does not guarantee a convicted felon to own and possess a gun. Background laws, background checks would do just what we have done in California. It would allow us to prohibit people who have been proven to be a danger to our society from owning and possessing a gun. That is just a common-sense approach.
And I think Democrats and Republicans have to really be unburdened by the ideology that has been pervasive in this debate and approach it from a practical perspective, which appreciates that we do not -- none of us want violent people, dangerous people, people who have been found to be seriously mentally ill. We don't want them to be in possession of a gun. We don't want them to be our neighbors.
COOPER: You're backing up with the...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: You're backing up with one of the arguments the NRA has been making, which is that there are plenty of people who have lied on their background checks who are able to walk out the door and not be prosecuted? Why haven't they been prosecuted after this?
HARRIS: Well, I suggest that some of them have been prosecuted. But I think a larger point, which is this public policy is not created around the abuses. We will deal with these abuses when they occur. But we should have smart public policy as it relates to regulating who can own a gun and who can possess a gun.
And in particular, we should all agree, and it should not be controversial. It shouldn't be up to the states individually to do it. Our folks in Washington, D.C., need to take some action and take control of this issue. And institute just some common, practical approaches to making sure that these people don't have guns.
And the background laws and the background checks will allow us to do that. It will allow each individual state, police chiefs around this country to make sure that dangerous people are not walking the streets in possession of a gun.
HUGHES: So Anthony, would you say perhaps an answer to Jeffrey's question about this alienation between law-abiding gun owners and the Democratic Party and their position on gun control is so often we hear politicians talking about gun control who clearly know nothing about guns. I don't know anything about guns.
BOURDAIN: It's a cultural divide. It's really a -- the appearance of a gun or even hunting clothes in a New York bar is an alarming sight. It is business as usual in, you know, Arkansas or Missouri. And it's that basic huge difference in -- between these cultures that's causing a lot of completely unnecessary polarization.
These are good people on both sides who need to reach some common sense. But a lot of gun lobbyists talk about, any time something goes wrong with a gun -- they compare guns to cars. You know, you can kill people with a lot of cars. For me, before you get a 16-wheeler, we'd like to know a little bit more about you. You know? Because you can kill a lot more people with a 16-wheeler if you don't know what you're doing or you're a maniac.
COOPER: What the NRA says, though, is that driving is not a fundamental right, whereas owning a gun is a right in this country.
We've got to leave it. Kamala Harris, it's good to have you on the program. Thank you. We'll be back.
HARRIS: Great to be with you. Thanks, Anderson.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: We want to thank Anthony Bourdain. Where are you going this Sunday?
BOURDAIN: The wild, weird, wonderful and excessive world of Quebec.
COOPER: And I remember, you and I talked about the chefs that you meet there, you say they're out of control.
BOURDAIN: The most dangerous chefs in North America.
COOPER: Dangerous?
BOURDAIN: You will -- you will...
AMANPOUR: Dangerous? Is that good, dangerous?
COOPER: Wine, all sorts of rich food?
BOURDAIN: It is not light cooking. And they -- they -- more equals better.
COOPER: More equals better.
TOOBIN: What did you eat in Libya?
BOURDAIN: Libya? Lamb barbecue, good seafood. You know, a lot of excellent seafood and leftover -- sort of remnants of Italian cuisine also from the Italian...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Got to leave it there. At 9, "Parts Unknown," Sunday?
BOURDAIN: Yes.
COOPER: Great to have you on. Christiane Amanpour, too, as well. Thanks so much.
Thanks for watching. Everyone join us every week -- every night this week, 10 p.m. Eastern for our little round table. We'll be right back.
All right, that's it for us actually. All right.
