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Obama Speaks on Financial Crisis Anniversary; Shooting at Washington Navy Yard

Aired September 16, 2013 - 12:30   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: One shooter, one suspect, deceased, she said. The suspect, dead, shot apparently by law enforcement.

Potentially two other shooters, her words, potentially two other shooter on the loose right now at large right now, and both wearing some sort of uniform.

So it's unclear exactly how precise that information is, if there's some confusion out there, but that's what the D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier said just a few moments ago.

Let's wait for the president. Lou Palumbo is joining us. But here comes the guest, the special guest that the president has invited for this event. The president was going to be highlighting how the U.S. economy has improved dramatically over these past five years. The millions of jobs that have been created, the new regulations that have gone into effect. He's going to suggest clearly the economy has a long way to go to get out of the deep hole it was in five years ago. But they're making progress. So there the president is about to be introduced. I'm anxious to hear if he opens his remarks as I suspect he will with some comments about this shooting incident not far away over at the U.S. navy yard. The president coming in right now. So let's listen in from the top.

(BEGIN LIFE FEED)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Before I begin, let me say a few words about the tragedy that's unfolding not far away from here at the Washington Navy Yard.

That's part of why our event today was delayed. I've been briefed by my team on the situation. We still don't know all the facts, but we do know that several people have been shot and some have been killed.

So we are confronting yet another mass shooting, and today, it happened on a military installation in our nation's capital. It's a shooting that targeted our military and civilian personnel.

These are men and women who were going to work, doing their job protecting all of us. They're patriots, and they know the dangers of serving abroad, but today they faced the unimaginable violence that they won't have expected here at home.

So we offer our gratitude to the navy and local law enforcement, federal authorities, and the doctors who responded with skill and bravery.

I've made it clear to my team that I want the investigation to be seamless so that federal and local authorities are working together, and as this investigation moves forward, we will do everything in our power to make sure whoever carried out this cowardly act is held responsible.

In the meantime, we send our thoughts and prayers to all at the navy yard who have been attached by this tragedy. We thank them for their service. We stand with the families of those who have been harmed. They're going to need our love and support.

And as we learn more about the courageous Americans who died today, their lives, their families, their patriotism, we will honor their service to the nation.

They helped to make great, and obviously, we're going to be investigating thoroughly what happened as we do so many of these shootings, sadly, that have happened, and do everything that we can to try to prevent them.

Now, in recent weeks, much of our attention has been focused on the events in Syria, the horrible use of chemical weapons on innocent people, including children, the need for a firm response from the international community, and over the weekend, we took an important step in that direction towards moving Syria's chemical weapons under international control so that they can be destroyed.

And we're not there yet, but if properly implemented, this agreement could end the threat these weapons pose not only to the Syrian people but to the world.

I want to be clear though that, even as we've dealt with the situation in Syria, we've continued to focus on my number one priority since the day I took office, making sure we recover from the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes and rebuilding our economy so it works for everybody who's willing to work hard, so that everybody who is willing to take responsibility for their lives has a chance to get ahead.

It was five years ago this week that the financial crisis rocked Wall Street, and sent an economy already heading into recession into a tailspin.

And it's hard sometimes to remember everything that happened during those months, but in a matter of a frightening few days and weeks, some of the largest investment banks in the world failed.

Stock markets plunged. Banks stopped lending to families and small businesses. Our auto industry, the heartbeat of American manufacturing, was flat-lining.

By the time I took office, the economy was shrinking by an annual rate of more than eight percent. Our businesses were shedding 800,000 jobs each month.

It was a perfect storm that would rob millions of Americans of jobs and homes and savings that they had worked a lifetime to build.

And it also laid bare the long erosion of the middle class that for more than a decade has had to work harder and harder just to keep up.

In fact, most Americans who've known economic hardship these past several years, they don't think about the collapse of Lehman Brothers when they think about the recession.

Instead, they recall the day they got the gut punch of a pink slip, or the day a bank took away their home, the day they got sick but didn't have health insurance, or the day they had to sit their daughter or son down and tell him or her that they couldn't afford to send their child back to college the next semester.

And so those are the stories that guided everything we've done. It's what in those earliest days of the crisis caused us to act so quickly through the Recovery Act to arrest the downward spiral and put a floor under the fall.

We put people to work repairing roads and bridges to keep teachers in our classrooms, our first responders on the streets. We helped responsible homeowners modify their mortgages so that more of them could keep their homes.

We helped jump start the flow of credit to help more small businesses keep their doors open. We saved the American auto industry.

As we worked to stabilize the economy and get it growing and creating jobs again, we also started pushing back against the trends that have been battering the middle class for decades.

So we took on a broken healthcare system. We invested in new American technologies to end our addition to foreign oil.

We put in place tough new rules on big banks, rules that we need to finalize before the end of the year, by the way, to make sure that the job is done.

And we put in new protections that crack down on the worst practices of mortgage lenders and credit card companies.

We also changed a tax code that was too skewed in favor of the wealthiest Americans. We locked in tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. We asked those at the top to pay a little bit more.

So if you add it all up, over the last three-and-a-half years, our businesses have added 7.5 million new jobs. The unemployment rate has come down. Our housing market is healing. Our financial system is safer.

We sell more goods made in America to the rest of the world than ever before. We generate more renewable energy than ever before. We produce more natural gas than anybody. Health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years.

And just two weeks from now, millions of Americans who have been locked out of buying health insurance just because they had a pre- existing condition, just because they've been sick or couldn't afford it, they're finally going to have a chance to buy quality affordable health care on the private marketplace.

What all this means is we've cleared away the rubble from the financial crisis and begun to lay a new foundation for economic growth and prosperity.

And in our personal lives, I think a lot of us understand that people have tightened their belts, shed debt, refocused on the things that really matter.

All of this happened because ultimately of the resilience and grit of the American people, and we should be proud of that. And on this five- year anniversary, we should take note of how far we've come from where we were five years ago.

But that's not the end of the story. As any middle class family will tell you, or anybody striving to get into the middle class, we are not yet where we need to be, and that's what we've got to focus on, all the remaining work that needs to be done to strengthen this economy.

We need to grow faster. We need more good-paying jobs. We need more broad-based prosperity. We need more ladders of opportunity for people who are currently poor but want to get into the middle class.

Because even though our businesses are creating new jobs and have broken record profits, the top one percent of Americans took home 20 percent of the nation's income last year while the average worker isn't seeing a raise at all.

In fact, that understates the problem. Most of the gains have gone to the top one-tenth of one percent, so in many ways, the trends that have taken hold over the past few decades of a winner-take-all economy where a few do better and better and better while everybody else just treads water or loses ground, those trends have been made worse by the recession.

That's what we should be focused on. That's what I'm focused on. That's what I know the Americans standing beside me as well as all of you out there are focused on.

And as Congress begins another budget debate, that's what Congress should be focused on. How do we grow the economy faster? How do we create better jobs?

How do we increase wages and incomes? How do we increase opportunity for those that have been locked out of opportunity? How do we create better retirement security?

That's what we should be focused on, because the stakes for our middle class and everybody who's fighting to get into the middle class could not be higher.

In today's hyper-competitive world, we have to make the investments necessary to attract good jobs that pay good wages and offer high standards of living.

And although ultimately our success will depend on all the innovation and hard work of our private sector, all that grit and resilience of the American people, government is going to have a critical role in making sure we have an education system that prepares our children and our workers for a global economy.

The budget Congress passes will determine whether we can hire more workers to upgrade our transportation and communications networks or fund the kinds of research and development that have always kept America on the cutting edge.

So what happens here in Washington makes a difference. What happens up on Capitol Hill is going to help determine not only the pace of our growth but also the quality of jobs, the quality of opportunity, for this generation and future generations.

(END LIVE FEED)

BLITZER: The president of the United States making the case for action right now in Congress to get a budget passed by the end of this month, to make sure there is no government shutdown, to make sure that the funding for ObamaCare goes forward.

Lots of economic issues on the agenda right now on this on this, the five-year anniversary of the near collapse of the U.S. economy and the start of that great Great Recession.

The president obviously has a lot going on right now, not only worrying about economic issues, raising the nation's debt ceiling, making sure ObamaCare is funded, make sure that there's no government shutdown, but on top of all this, he's got a crisis in Syria.

You heard the president say he's hopeful that this ingredient with the Russians may bear some fruit. We'll see soon enough whether it does. We have a lot more on that story coming up.

About three or three-and-a-half miles away where the president is right now, over at the U.S. Navy Yard, there's been a shooting incident, multiple fatalities, according to authorities on the scene, multiple deaths.

We don't have specific numbers, the president saying some people were shot. Some of them were killed. A mass shooting, he called it.

Let's bring in Gloria Borger and Jake Tapper. Gloria is with me. Jake Tapper is on the scene over there.

Jake, I just want to be precise, first of all, what we heard from the D.C. police chief, Cathy Lanier saying that one shooter, one suspect, was shot and killed.

But potentially there are two others who remain at large right now. And just update our viewers on that because that is very, very disturbing if in fact it's true. TAPPER: It is unsettling news, Wolf, and it gives some explanation why we've seen so many helicopters in this region, presumably searching for these two individuals that the police chief, Cathy Lanier, identified as being potentially suspects.

And the second and third shooters, they're described as one of them is a white male wearing khaki clothing. He was last seen here at the Naval Yard at about the 8:35 this morning wearing a beret.

That's not to say that definitively he is known to be in the military, but he was wearing military-style clothing. He had a handgun and then that's one of the shooters, potential shooters.

The third potential shooter is a black male identified as about 50- years-old, wearing olive drab, again, in a potential military uniform. He is said to be in possession of a long gun.

These are the two individuals that this big manhunt is under way searching for, both, of course, the metropolitan police department and the U.S. park police, but also U.S. marshals and now the FBI is involved, as well.

We know from Evan Perez, our correspondent at the Justice Department, that not long after the call was placed this morning, shortly before 8:15 this morning, and the Metropolitan Police Department showed up not long after that, this elite unit at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also dispatched to the scene. This is the same unit that did such an exemplary job in Boston in the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, catching him in that boat, as I'm sure all of our viewers remember.

In any case, this manhunt is still underway and we're told to expect more information in the next hour and a half or so.

Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Jake, stand by for a moment.

We're going to bring Gloria Borger into this conversation as well. We're monitoring multiple stories right now, including the huge breaking news here in Washington of what's going on at the U.S. Navy Yard. One suspect believed dead, but potentially, according to the Washington, D.C. police chief, Cathy Lanier, two other suspects, two other shooters at large. Right now the president's speaking out about Syria, the economy. We'll take a quick break. Much more of our coverage right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: We're continuing to follow the breaking news here in Washington, D.C. over at the U.S. Navy Yard, not very far away from where we are in the CNN Washington bureau, over specifically at the Naval Sea Systems Command building 197. About four hours or so ago, 8:20 a.m. Eastern Time, there was a shooting incident. And we are told that one shooter, at least according to the D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, is deceased. But two other suspects, two other shooters, potentially at large right now. This is obviously a very sensitive, fluid situation.

I want to play for you precisely what we heard from the Washington, D.C. police chief, Cathy Lanier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF CATHY LANIER, METROPOLITAN D.C. POLICE: The big concern for us right now is, is that we potentially have two other shooters that we have not located at this point. So, right now, all's we have on those potential other shooters, and this is not confirmed. We potentially may have two additional shooters out there, one being a white male who was last seen around 8:35, 8:40 this morning in a khaki tan military uniform, short sleeved, with a beret hat, appeared to be like a naval uniform. That white male was last seen around 8:35 this morning with a handgun.

We also have a lookout potentially for another shooter involved that was a black male approximately 50 years of age who may have been in possession of a long gun. That person was wearing an olive drab colored possible military-style uniform. We have no information to believe that either of those folks are military personnel, but we do have information that those individuals are wearing military-style uniforms.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Cathy Lanier, the D.C. police chief.

A manhunt -- an emergency manhunt -- clearly underway as a result of potentially -- her words -- potentially two other shooters remaining at large.

There's some movement over there at the Navy Yard. Brian Todd is on the scene.

What are you seeing, Brian?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, a lot of police activity just now coming down 11th Street toward this staging area down here. This is clearly some kind of staging area for law enforcement. Our photojournalist, Mark Walls (ph), can zoom back in down here to what appears to be a staging area. Here comes another chopper to our left. But there is tactical vehicles, tactical personnel. We saw some plain clothes personnel donning some tactical gear a short time ago. So clearly some kind of staging going on down here, down 11th Street. This is the eastern most side of the Navy Yard. So they're setting up some kind of a perimeter over here to move in and move around.

As we know, they are looking for two -- potentially two other shooters in addition to the one that the police chief identified as being deceased. They are looking to find potentially two other shooters and we'll go over the description again. One is a white male, last seen at about 8:35 a.m. Eastern Time. That was more than four hours ago. So, again, if there are two potential other shooters, they've been on the loose for at least four hours. One is a white male with a khaki military clothing, short sleeved shirt with a beret carrying possibly a handgun according to the police chief. The other is a black male approximately 50 years old with a long gun wearing olive drab clothing.

But we have to reiterate for viewers that the police chief said these are potentially two other shooters. It also could be the case that they may not find two other shooters, so we have to keep you kind of abreast of that potential development. This is such fluid information, such a fluid theme here that we have to say the word potential and really stress that at this time. Potentially two other shooters.

And, again, you've got tactical gear being donned by police down here. They're setting up some kind of a staging area down here, down on 11th Street southeast. This is a fairly large perimeter around the Navy Yard. About 3,000 people work here. A lot of buildings in this facility. This was the Naval Sea Systems Command building where this shooting occurred at about, according to the police chief, the call first came in shortly after 8:15 a.m. So you're talking more than four hours, Wolf, of a very, very active crime scene.

BLITZER: All right, stand by, Brian, because there's a lot of fluid - it's fluidity, we should say, in this situation right now. But a manhunt clearly underway for potentially two other shooters, one shooter diseased, killed as a result of what's going on. All of this according to Cathy Lanier, the D.C. Police chief.

We'll take a quick break. At the top of the hour, we're going to hear precisely, for those of you especially who missed what the president of the United States had to say moments ago, you'll hear his remarks on this shooting that's going on, that took place here in Washington. Suspects presumably still at large. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BLITZER: A horrible shooting incident here in the nation's capital just a few hours ago. We're watching what's going on. We're staying on top of all of the breaking news. Here's what some eyewitnesses told us just a little while ago about what they saw at the U.S. Navy Yard.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TODD BRUNDIDGE, WITNESS: The fire alarm went off first. And I was on the phone and somebody came to my desk and said, hey, this is not a fire alarm, somebody has been shot in the building. So we went around trying to get people out of the building. And as we were exiting the backdoor, he -- we noticed him down the hall. He stepped around the corner. We heard shots. And as he came around the corner, he aimed his gun at us and then he fired at least two or three shots. And we ran down the stairs to get out of the building. And after we left the building, there were still shots in the building.

TERRIE DURHAM, WITNESS: He was far enough down the hall that we couldn't see his face, but we could see him with the rifle and he raised and aimed at us and fired. And he hit high on the wall just as we were trying to leave. BRUNDIDGE: Everybody was going down the stairs. And people were pushing. People were shoving. You know, people were falling down. After we came outside, people were climbing the wall trying to get - you know, trying to get out over the wall to get out of the spaces. It was just crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Barbara Starr is over at the Pentagon, where they've tightened security out of what they call an abundance of caution.

What's the latest, Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, security heightened here at the Pentagon, as it has been in so many areas across Washington, D.C. this morning. Abundance of caution, but if -- if there are two additional shooters, no one is taking any chances. And it might be worth revisiting very quickly why the uncertainty about the possibility of two additional shooters, as Chief Cathy Lanier just talked about a short time ago.

The reason is this information comes from eyewitness accounts inside the building several hours ago. People who reported they believed they indeed did see additional shooters. So that's the information they're working off of. That's why they're trying to find these people.

The descriptions, however, a bit peculiar. If not really describing a military uniform, for example, one being described in short sleeves with a beret, a Navy style uniform. The Navy does not wear berets. A very small detail, I grant you, but it really goes to the question, are these people in military uniforms or military style uniforms. What is law enforcement really on the lookout for right now, Wolf?

BLITZER: Barbara, stand by.

Once again, we're following the breaking news. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. We want to welcome viewers in the United States and around the world.

At least 10 people are injured, several have been killed, after a shooting rampage at the Washington Naval Yard just a short distance from where I am right now here up on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Here's what we know. The D.P. police chief now says there may be, may be three gunmen and two may still be on the loose. One suspect is dead. This according to the D.C. police chief, Cathy Lanier.

Shots broke out this morning around 8:30 a.m. Eastern. Witnesses describe one of the gunmen as a tall, bald man wearing black and carrying what looked like a rifle. At least two law enforcement officers are among the shooting victims.