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Amanpour

Murder Case Against Oscar Pistorius; Interview with Former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan

Aired February 20, 2013 - 15:00   ET

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

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

The murder case against star athlete Oscar Pistorius continues to rattle South Africa and transfix much of the world. The story of the heroic disabled athlete who overcame adversity to compete in the Olympic Games and his fall from grace is all playing out like a classic Greek tragedy.

Police say the Valentine's Day shooting of his girlfriend, the model, Reeva Steenkamp, was a cold-blooded murder. Pistorius denies that, claiming he mistook his girlfriend for an intruder when he fired four shots through a locked bathroom door.

At his bail hearing in Pretoria today, a new allegation: police say they found testosterone and needles in his bedroom. Pistorius' attorney says what they actually found was a herbal supplement.

And from the police, testimony about previous encounters with Pistorius, one allegation that he fired a weapon at a restaurant just last month and that he assaulted a woman back in 2009. Police say that case was dropped for lack of evidence.

Meantime, South Africa looks on in stupefied disbelief against a mounting series of blows to the national psyche, what one prominent political commentator calls a war against women, culminating recently in the horrific gang rape and death of a 17-year-old girl that had many South Africans calling for a change of culture even before the Pistorius case.

To give us unique insight into the drama wracking the Rainbow Nation, one of the country's leading investigative journalists, Debora Patta, host of a national program called "Third Degree," and she's closely following the Pistorius case.

Welcome to the program, Debora. And let me ask you first and foremost, how difficult will it be for Oscar Pistorius to actually get bail and to get out of jail, given that it's the highest charge that he's facing, premeditated murder?

DEBORA PATTA, HOST, "THIRD DEGREE": In fact, in South Africa, Christiane, that is a Schedule 6 crime. As you correctly said, the highest possible crime charge that he is facing. It's a tough call; he has to prove extreme circumstances.

But today was pretty much of a roller coaster of a day because the state case took significant blows. The investigating officer on the stand caved in under good probing from the defense team, who knocked a lot of holes into his argument and forced him to concede that he had contaminated evidence and that perhaps the case was not as watertight as it initially seemed.

AMANPOUR: Explosion that, Debora. What do you mean contaminated evidence?

And what major holes were poked in the -- in the prosecution's case?

PATTA: Well, the state's investigating officer was forced to concede that he walked onto the crime scene without wearing foot gloves because there weren't any available. And this was a pretty shocking admission. And certainly bode very badly for the prosecution team.

He also was forced to concede that there was no physical evidence that actually contradicted Pistorius' version of events. Now bear in mind this is a bail hearing. We're not into the full criminal proceedings yet.

There's still a lot of forensic evidence that hasn't been produced from the laboratories. But he was forced into a corner and in the beginning of the court proceedings today, Oscar Pistorius, as has been the case for many times now in court, was sobbing uncontrollably. But by the end of the day, he looked a lot more relaxed and composed.

AMANPOUR: So meanwhile how is South Africa reacting on a daily basis, as more and more of this -- well, not evidence, but more and more of this story gets public?

PATTA: I think, you know, Christiane, if you'd asked me about three weeks ago, I would have said these kind of horrific stories elicit nothing more than a shrug from South Africans, not because we're cruel and heartless necessarily, but because people are desensitized; one bloody headline in this country makes way for another on a daily basis. We barely have time to catch our breath.

In the week before Oscar Pistorius was accused of gunning down his girlfriend, as you correctly mentioned, a 17-year-old woman was gang raped. But in the few days between those two crimes, we had two other violent murders that didn't even make it onto most national bulletins; such is the nature of violence in this country.

And I think South Africans are starting to realize that what we teach our young people -- and specifically how we teach our men -- is very important. We (inaudible) need (inaudible) in this country role models that are not about who hits the hardest or who runs the fastest. We have to teach our men to literally be different in this country.

AMANPOUR: Debora, I'm going to get more of that in a moment.

But first I want to ask you, as an investigative reporter and as someone who's been following these issues for so long, you heard me talk about the other allegations from the police today, the issue of his charge by the police that Oscar Pistorius had fired a gun at a restaurant, had had an encounter potentially with a domestic nature back in 2009. That case was dropped.

Now what do you know about these cases? And how is it that we or South Africa hasn't heard about these cases, given he was so prominent?

PATTA: I think that's one of the most disturbing features of this entire case. Now whatever happens in court -- and bear in mind, this is a court case and still these allegations have to be proved, whether it was premeditated or an accident.

But even given that, there was clearly seeds of some trouble. There were demons that were driving this young man, Oscar Pistorius, who we knew as this much-loved Olympics hero in South Africa. And yet there were signs of aggression; a weapon was fired in an open public place. It was an accident. But nobody reported it because there doesn't seem to be that kind of culture.

It's as if, when you're famous or a celebrity or of an athletic status, such as Oscar Pistorius was, you have different rules applying to you. You get away with it. It's just wild boys doing their thing, letting off steam. And that kind of thing does not get reported.

The allegation in 2009 was not tested in a court of law; it was dropped before it could get there. Oscar Pistorius wasn't as famous then as he is now. But certainly, that, too, seems to have been dropped and just pushed under the carpet.

And now when one looks back with the benefit, of course, the exact science of hindsight, it does seem that there were warning signs, that, at the very least, Oscar Pistorius displayed a significant amount of aggression and that there were not people around him who were sort of grounding him and pulling him back to Earth.

AMANPOUR: You know, you say that. I want to play a little bit of an interview that his uncle gave today, regarding his character and the nature of his nephew.

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ARNOLD PISTORIUS, UNCLE OF OSCAR PISTORIUS: He's not a violent person. He's a peacemaker. The -- he's always been a peacemaker. And that's his nature. He looks tough. He looks like the superstar and hold himself in public domain. But he's actually a very, very kind, soft person.

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AMANPOUR: So that is clearly the view of the family. And yet when we were just talking about these allegations that the police detective brought up, you also sort of corroborating them, do you have the facts on that? Is that clear, what happened, what happened in 2009, this issue of the gun? Is that incontrovertible?

PATTA: Well, the gun took place just a couple of weeks ago, and that is incontrovertible. The gun was fired in an open public area. Oscar Pistorius disputes that he fired the gun; he says it was a friend. But people who were with him said he did fire it. It was fired in accident, make no mistake. But the fact that a gun was being played around in a public is, in and of itself, horrifying.

And secondly, the fact that it actually wasn't reported, that nobody saw fit to actually make a big song-and-dance about this, I think in many other parts of the world, a crime such as this would provoke a debate on gun proliferation. And the use of guns in South Africa. That doesn't seem to be happening to enough of an extent, I think, in this country.

The incident in 2009 involved a former girlfriend and another woman, in which a door was kicked down at a party. Oscar Pistorius spoke very openly at the time, saying that it was a misunderstanding, that perhaps this other woman had had too much to drink, that he'd been accused of violence. He laid a countercharge and eventually the whole thing was dropped.

And I think part of the problem is that South Africa wants its heroes to be unflawed. We want to believe so badly in this metaphor of inspiration that we overlook the sort of outside physical attributes; we praise those and see this glorious specimen of humanity who overcame incredible odds. We're so in love with that narrative that we actually don't look enough and deeply enough at the person behind it.

And given the fact that this is a country that suffers extreme violence, where a woman is raped every four minutes and a woman is killed by her partner every eight minutes in this country, it's no wonder that we look for those kinds of metaphors for inspiration and don't probe them deeply enough.

AMANPOUR: And of course, you mentioned the issue of, you know, just looking towards heroes; everybody knows the story of Lance Armstrong, and, in a different way, his fall from grace as well.

But let me ask you again, Justice Malala -- you probably know him; he's a prominent political commentator in your country. And he has talked about femicide, the kinds of things you were just talking about, but he also said that, you know, in his state of the nation speech just last week, President Zuma, he says, you know, lashed out against rampant violence against women.

It was right after this horrific attack on Anene Booyson, then announced, quote, "Drastic measures to clamp down on workers in communities protesting against lack of services and didn't announce any serious new measures to fight any women-related abuses."

What is it going to take, do you think, to change this culture of impunity?

In the bigger picture?

PATTA: Well, I think there's a -- there's a number of -- there's a number of things. Think when Justice Malala spoke about in that article, when he very profoundly spoke about a country being at war with its women, is that there is a state of emergency in some senses in this country, that things have got to a level that are untenable, that something is broken at its core.

And on one level, it's a change of consciousness. I spoke earlier about how we raise men, the images we had, the metaphors we use, who we raise up as heroes, what kind of images of masculinity we have. And that's going to take a much longer time to do.

But on another level, it's for a country to be shaken out of its apathy, if you will, around violence against women and face the hard, cold facts, stare them in the face, that this is a country that needs help when it comes to these issues.

It requires desperate, firm action; it requires strong action from President Zuma's government and, at the same time it requires us as citizens to take matters and very seriously delve into the issues facing us and to do something about it, that we actually can't shrug our shoulders anymore. This is something that concerns every single South African.

AMANPOUR: Debora Patta, thank you so much for joining me from Johannesburg.

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AMANPOUR: And after a break, we will turn to another country in turmoil, Pakistan. If you think you have a tough job, try being America's ambassador there. I'll talk to the man who held that post when the Navy SEALs took out bin Laden. No, it wasn't "Zero Dark Thirty." It's the real thing, when we return.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program. Before setting off on his first world tour as secretary of state, today America's new diplomat in chief, John Kerry, made his first major public policy address, highlighting the value of diplomacy in an era when America appears to be speaking with its military might.

My guest, Cameron Munter, understands the value of diplomacy perhaps better than anyone and the high stakes of a fraught relationship. He served as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, where he was forced to put out fires ranging from the NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers to the fallout from the secret raid that captured Osama bin Laden.

A diplomat's diplomat, Ambassador Munter has served the United States for decades during the fall of the Iron Curtain, during the Balkan wars and throughout America's longest wars, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thank you for joining me, Ambassador.

CAMERON MUNTER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO PAKISTAN: Pleasure to be with you.

AMANPOUR: It's very, very good to hear -- see you here.

Let me ask you first, obviously, because everybody wants to know: you got the call several hours before the raid on the Abbottabad complex of Osama bin Laden. How does that happen? Who says what to you? And then what do you do?

MUNTER: Well, the point about this was that it was a team effort. The plans for Abbottabad had been going on in the U.S. government in a very small circle for quite a long time.

I can't claim that I knew all the details. But what happened was that our main concern, and the concern I had when I talked to the people in Washington, was the safety of the American community overseas, because we didn't know what the response would be. Spent a lot of time talking with our team about how we would take care of the people in the embassy and the Americans overseas.

AMANPOUR: Did you suspect that the Pakistani government would be so enraged -- and the military?

MUNTER: We didn't really know what to think --

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AMANPOUR: -- you'd been there.

MUNTER: Well, we -- in 1979, our embassy was overrun in Islamabad and burned. And so you never want to see something like that happen and you want to make sure that you have everything in place in case it does.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, then, because throughout your time as ambassador, you had a lot of challenges and a very, practically dysfunctional relationship developing between U.S. and Pakistan, such an important relationship. And the latest polling shows us the results of that.

You know, Pakistan's opinion of the United States has gone from 8 percent, you know, to 74 percent against.

Is there any chance, do you think, and how will that turn around?

MUNTER: I think it's very important to look at these numbers and remember that what we're talking about is a picture the Pakistanis have of us, that they see, in terms of our security policy, and the events that you talked about, the very unfortunate event of the Raymond Davis case, the event that took place, the Abbottabad raid, et cetera.

There's a part of America that the Pakistanis respect very much. This is our education, our business acumen, our openness and cultural side.

I think what we need in the relationship and what I think we're achieving now over time is some balance between the focus on counterterrorism, which is very important, and the long-term relationship that we have with universities, people to people, with businesses, because that's the essence of a good relationship with Pakistan.

AMANPOUR: Well, let me ask you, then, because there's a new book coming out by Vali Nasr, who was in the AfPak team of President Obama and the secretary of state. He worked for Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who I know was your professional mentor, the very, very good friend of mine as well.

And Vali Nasr has basically said and recounted how the Pentagon and the CIA for many of these recent years ran, directed and dominated U.S. policy towards Pakistan. The diplomatic considerations of the like that you're talking about were essentially given short shrift.

Did that play a part in your decision to leave as ambassador?

MUNTER: Well, you know, we have a traditionally very close relationship between our military and the Pakistani military, between the Pakistani ISI, which is their equivalent of the CIA, because these are questions of great importance to the United States. This -- these are life-or-death issues. This is Al Qaeda, is in the Pakistani frontier areas.

So this was a legitimate relationship that they had --

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MUNTER: Now what --

AMANPOUR: (Inaudible) that.

MUNTER: Right. Now what we needed and what Richard Holbrooke stood for -- and I think the entire government that is bipartisan -- Dick Lugar, John Kerry, other people -- was a balance of that, a long-term look at Pakistan, the people, the needs they have, the economic growth.

I think this is what Vali Nasr is talking about that it's not that we don't need these kinds of counterterrorist work. We need to supplement those with the commitment to the Pakistani people and to their future, and to stability.

AMANPOUR: And they clearly weren't feeling that. I mean, would you agree with the premise of his book, that there was too much emphasis? I mean, you talk about a balance and the two relationships are necessary, that there was too much emphasis for too long recently on the speaking with the military (inaudible).

MUNTER: Well, that was where the tradition came from. Certainly in the years after 2001, we worked very closely with the Pakistanis. And here, the Pakistani soldiers are fighting the same people that are people are fighting. And this was a relationship that was important.

But I do agree that we need to have more balance. We worked on it during my time there. I'll be honest with you; I think we could have done a lot better. I think the Pakistanis could have done a lot better. I think the team that's there now is trying to do that, to have more outreach, to have more long-term commitment to Pakistan and the needs they have in addition to what we have in counterterrorism.

AMANPOUR: Because again, you know, when you got back from your service as ambassador, you spoke to "The Daily Beast," and you talked about, you know, getting calls and talking to the White House.

When I get calls from the White House, they say, "Dial up the pain." This is you saying that. In Islamabad, they don't respond well to "dialing up the pain."

MUNTER: Right. (Inaudible). Look, when you're dealing with diplomacy, you're dealing with the idea of listening as well as talking. Many times --

AMANPOUR: And the White House was saying --

MUNTER: Well, when you say White House -- I'm -- there is a large interagency process, and sometimes people make the mistake of saying here is the Pentagon, here is the CIA. There are many people in the U.S. bureaucracy who had different opinions about how to deal with overseas, with diplomacy overseas.

A diplomat will want to make sure that in addition to telling America's story, that we're listening to the other person's perception so we can come to some sort of agreement.

That was the key.

AMANPOUR: There was, for several years, a real reachout. There was the Kerry bill; there 2 billion U.S. dollars devoted to civilian aid, I believe, correct? To increasing the sort of important diplomatic and relationship building.

MUNTER: Right. This was $7.5 billion authorized over five years from the Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation, still ongoing right now.

AMANPOUR: And things were good during that period.

MUNTER: Well, we didn't get everything done that we wanted to and we should look hard at our systems program to see where we may have failed. But I think in Pakistan, we also ran into a government that wasn't always able to deliver.

And I think being honest about that with ourselves, saying that even though our motives were good, the idea of building a long-term relationship, we have a lot of work to do to make sure that that works better.

AMANPOUR: Now Secretary Kerry, as I said, is going abroad, and he's just made his first public speech.

We picked up a couple of interesting pointers from his speech, in which he basically said it's our job -- the United States -- "to connect the dots for the American people between what we do over there and why it matters here at home."

Has the U.S. -- have leaders done a good enough job? And if they don't, what are the consequences?

MUNTER: Yes. Senator Kerry is a wonderful exactly of someone who really knows how to empathize with people. During the Raymond Davis case, when he came out to Pakistan, he spoke on Pakistani TV and was able to listen to people. He was able to listen to their concerns.

He also came out afterwards in the period after the Abbottabad raid. So he personally is very aware of that (inaudible) listen as well as talk.

Hillary Clinton is widely beloved in Pakistan for being frank, straightforward and reaching out to people. We can do that. But the problem is, in Pakistan, the problems are so entrenched and difficult that it's going to take long-term commitment. It's going to take many, many years and a lot of money, and that's very difficult for us.

AMANPOUR: And what about the whole notion that diplomats like yourself need to be there, need to be seen, need to have a certain interaction with people? Now obviously we go back to the case of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi; the place was burnt down. He along with others were killed. That will have a chilling effect on the people- to-people contact. Tell me how important that is.

MUNTER: Well, I hope we draw the right conclusion from what Chris did, because Chris was a master. I didn't know him well, but I know that he was a master at reaching out, talking to people, knowing what was going on. And some people have described this as a battle between security and diplomacy. That's a false -- that's a false distinction.

The security people, in order to keep the diplomats secure, need to be out there as well. They need to know the cops. They need to know the intelligence people so that they know what happens. Just building a wall is not going to protect you.

So just as the diplomats, like Chris Stevens, need to go out and find out the information, to listen, to figure out what's going on, the security people also need to get out. You can't hide behind a wall. And if we're able to reach out -- and I believe that's what John Kerry is talking about that he wants to reach out, I think we can be successful.

AMANPOUR: The new administration? We hope that's success.

MUNTER: Yes. Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Ambassador Cameron Munter, thank you very much for joining me.

MUNTER: Thank you.

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AMANPOUR: And we'll be back with a final thought, right after a break.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where two hostile nations are united by an ancient sport. The keepers of the Olympic flame have decreed that wrestling may be dropped from the 2020 Summer Games. To earn the last spot, wrestling was when a popularity contest with such Johnny-come-latelies (sic) as roller skating and softball.

It is a low blow for an event that's been around since the very first Olympics in 708 B.C., when men smeared themselves with olive oil and wrestled naked. But it may be an even bigger loss for Iran, where wrestling is a national passion, dating back centuries to when Persian kings literally wrestled for power.

For over 60 years, Iran has been an Olympic heavyweight, most recently at last year's London Games, where it won six medals for the sport; three of them were gold.

The U.S. and Iran wrestled against each other back then, just as they have wrangled politically over Iran's nuclear ambitions, with the U.S. putting a headlock on Iran with heavy economic sanctions. But now the two opponents are putting aside their political differences in this case and making up a tag-team to keep wrestling on the Olympic agenda.

You've heard of ping-pong diplomacy? Maybe wrestling diplomacy will thaw the ice between the U.S. and Iran. One can only hope.

That's it for tonight's program. Meantime, you can always contact us on our website, amanpour.com. Thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.

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