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Trump's Threats for Turkey; Critical Week for Brexit; Racial Abuse Halts Football Match; U.S. Impeachment Inquiry; Japan Hit Hard by Typhoon Hagibis; White Officer Arrested in Killing of Unarmed Black Woman; Saudi Team Plays for First Time in Occupied Territories. Aired 12-1a ET
Aired October 15, 2019 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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NICK WATT, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello, everyone. I am Nick Watt. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles.
Ahead this, hour Donald Trump takes a hard line on Turkey, threatening to destroy that country's economy as her forces push deeper into Syria.
Plus, first the pageantry; now the politics as potentially the most crucial week in Brexit negotiations gets underway.
And, football officials stop a Euro 2020 qualifier not once but twice after the beautiful game is overshadowed by yet another ugly racist incident.
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WATT: The U.S. has announced new tariffs and harsh sanctions on Turkey, matching president Donald Trump's blustering threat to quote, "destroy the Turkish economy."
But Turkey's offensive on Kurdish factions in northern Syria is not stopping. Meanwhile, the Kurds, abandoned by the U.S., are finding new allies, saying they have struck a deal with a U.S. enemy, the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, whose troops are right now moving north on a potential collision course with Turkey.
CNN's Nick Paton Walsh has more from northern Syria.
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NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Each dawn seems to bring seismic change in Syria now, yet the darkness never seems to end. This is Qamishli, once the Syrian Kurds' de facto capital, but now shuttered, empty, the internet partially off and drifting fast into Syrian regime hands. Every road, a story of people fleeing hatred old or new, as land changes hands yet again. WALSH: Pretty much every road we've gone on, so far this morning, we've heard either verified information or rumors that the Syrian regime is coming, that they're moving fast into Syrian Kurdish territory, kind of in a land grab after their political deal with the Syrian Kurdish leadership, to seize as much territory as they can.
WALSH (voice-over): This is Tal Tamr, Kurdish 24 hours ago and, Monday morning, swarming with regime forces and residents, who remembered what to say to them.
"I was hiding this picture of Bashar al-Assad," he says, "and now I raise it with the return of the Syrian army. Down with Turkish President Erdogan."
The border was almost calm. Yet, we're told as we left, we're welcome back any time. But now, we should run.
WALSH: Time, certainly, to leave. It's possible even this border post behind us, where there's a sense of panic about what comes next, may even be in Syrian regime hands, possibly, in the days ahead.
WALSH (voice-over): Twenty-four hours earlier, we began a simple trip to Kobani when it all collapsed. Gunfire, horror. The road blocked, though, by Syrian rebels supported by Turkey, that a U.S. official has said are mostly former ISIS and Al Qaeda.
An American convoy pulled out --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jet, jet.
WALSH (voice-over): -- and were quickly buzzed by a jet.
And as we pulled back Turkish military vehicles pulled up to the main highway. Turkey, openly admitting it had taken a road most thought was far from their plan. It was a defining moment, isolating American forces here and the U.S. declared it was leaving.
MARK ESPER, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We find ourselves, as we have American forces likely caught between two opposing advancing armies and it's a very untenable situation.
WALSH (voice-over): Yet those they abandoned continue to bleed. Turkey, striking a convoy headed to the besieged border town of Ras al-Ain.
Turkey long said it wanted to do this, but nobody guessed it would be this brutal.
America long said it would leave Syrians behind one day, but nobody thought it would be so fast. And the regime long said they would retake as much of Syria as they could, but nobody thought the U.S. would make it so easy for them and their Russian backers.
Twenty-four hours that changed how the world works and 24 more hours in which Syrians bleed -- Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Qamishli, Syria.
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WATT: For more David Sanger joins me from Washington. He's a CNN political and national security analyst as well as a national security correspondent for "The New York Times."
David, so often we pontificate on TV about the potential ramifications of a decision, months or maybe years down the line. Here we are seeing those ramifications within days, perhaps hours. It is quite extraordinary.
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DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: And it, is Nick and I think the reason for that is that we are seeing events play out on the ground that are speeding up the worst warnings that President Trump has been given, really for months now, certainly back in December, when he wanted to pull all American troops out of Syria and was told of the consequences.
And you will remember that is when General Jim Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, resigned in protest.
So what we are seeing happen now is that, in one fell swoop, the president agreed to an action by President Erdogan that ended up empowering Russians, empowering ISIS, empowering the Iranians, empowering Bashar Assad and basically selling out the Kurds, who had been the American allies.
WATT: And, I mean, the president has, said, and I quote, that he has "great and unmatched wisdom" in this area.
Is that kind of perhaps misplaced confidence a problem here?
Is that what is causing this?
Or is there a naivete on behalf of the president or is there something more nefarious that is driving his policy here?
SANGER: I think that will be debated by historians, by conspiracy theorists for a long time. A few things are clear. He came into office with a very clear view and maybe a mandate from his base to reduce American commitments abroad.
He sometimes conflates what he calls "endless wars" with persistent troop presence, like what you see along the Syrian border, like what you see in Germany, like what you see in Japan and South Korea, where an American force is there as a deterrent but really is not taking any casualties and frequently is not spending all that much money.
Certainly this operation in Syria was a very small one.
Thirdly, I think, the president has often said that he trusts his own gut. He obviously is not somebody who sits around and spends the evening reading intelligence reports or summaries of policy papers.
He very much learned to trust his instincts in the real estate world and I think it is just another example of why, when you hear sometimes that we need to apply more of the lessons of business to government, it does not always work.
WATT: But, I mean, now, what we are seeing are the Kurds making a deal with Damascus. This has changed the whole picture there on the ground.
I mean, what is going to happen in the next month, as a result of this?
SANGER: Two weeks, ago we could not have anticipated this would happen, back last, summer, Jim Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy for Syria and a previous ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, a very experienced diplomat, told people at the Aspen Security Forum out in Colorado, that the United States' presence along that border would be indefinite.
Well, clearly he was wrong and so we could not predict that this was going to happen. A few things do seem clear.
The president on Monday decided to announce some modest sanctions against Turkey and against individual Turks, not against president Erdogan, interestingly enough. I doubt this will be enough to get them to reverse course and pull back to their borders.
It is just an effort to see if they can get a cease-fire. I suspect that will be difficult.
I think the second thing you will see is more empowerment of the Russians, because they are in pretty good shape right now and their forces are looking pretty, good so Putin's bet during the Obama administration that if he moved into Syria, he would not be pushed back out, that is paying off.
WATT: And, David, finally, the U.S. is, for good or evil, the world's policeman, in a sense, and now why would any, government any, faction, why would anybody like the Kurds ever trust this administration again?
SANGER: They would not and I think the bigger and more interesting question is, will they trust the United States again?
The president is not the first one in the U.S. to, at some point or another, give up on an ally and certainly not the first time the Kurds have been betrayed. That, of course, happened back in the '80s as well, so I think people would be increasingly cautious.
And I think you are getting at the central question, which, is at some point, the Trump presidency will end.
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SANGER: We don't know whether that is in 2021 or 2025. But at some point it will and the question, is it possible to move to rebuild old alliances?
Or is this a case where you can never go home again, that the world will have changed some fundamental ways while President Trump was president?
And we're just going to have to adjust and maybe in a world where China is rising so quickly, adjust to being number two.
WATT: David Sanger, joining us from, Washington, thank you very much.
SANGER: Thank you, always good to be with you.
WATT: Meanwhile in Spain, Catalan separatists are protesting long jail sentences just imposed on nine of their leaders. Thousands marched through Barcelona, others blocked access to the international airport.
Police say they stopped the protesters from getting inside. Spain's supreme court has jailed the secessionist leaders for between nine and 30 years for their role in a failed independence bid. The protesters have threatened to, quote, "stop the country."
And Thursday might be a do or die day for the U.K. and European Union negotiators from both sides will meet in Brussels trying to hammer out a final deal for the United Kingdom to leave the E.U.
The E.U.'s chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said the divorce day is still set for October 31st. And at the start of perhaps the most crucial week in the years-long wrangling over Brexit, Queen Elizabeth opened a new session of Parliament on Monday and Hadas Gold has the details.
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HADAS GOLD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In a ceremony showcasing the height of British pageantry, the queen, bedecked in jewels and a long fur robe, officially opened a new session of Parliament on Monday.
In a speech that is always written for her by the government, the queen laid out a long list of government promises and proposals, even though prime minister Boris Johnson would have a tough time getting any through, considering he does not command a majority of the House of Commons.
Among, them the government's intention to leave the European Union by October 31st.
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ELIZABETH II, QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN: My government's priority has always been to secure the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union on the 31st of October. My government intends to work towards a new partnership with the European Union based on free trade and friendly cooperation.
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GOLD: But that may be a tall order, despite some rays of positivity creeping their way through the negotiations. At issue still is the Irish border. Johnson's new plan includes a complex customs mechanism for Northern Ireland but there are signs there maybe some flexibility on both sides.
BORIS JOHNSON, U.K. PRIME MINISTER: Farmers and for millions of ordinary people.
GOLD: Johnson and his team are hoping that positive comments from the, E.U. especially the Irish, will help buoy a deal at the crucial European Council meeting in Brussels later this week.
Then if an agreement is struck with the E.U. leaders, the race is on for the deal to be approved in Parliament in a special Saturday session, something that has not happened since 1982 during the Falklands War.
Of course, the clock continues to tick down and it is not clear, even if everything goes to plan, that there will be enough time to get a deal struck, voted through Parliament and all the technical details ironed out before that October 31st deadline. We may be once again heading towards another Brexit delay -- Hadas Gold, CNN, London.
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WATT: The scourge of racism still looms large in European football. On Monday night, the Euro 2020 qualifier between England and Bulgaria in Sofia had to be stopped twice after racist abuse from spectators. Stopping games is part of a new plan to curb such abuse at matches.
But will it help?
Don Riddell takes a look.
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DON RIDDELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: England's football players made a statement in Sofia on Monday night. They did not leave the field of play in their European qualifier against Bulgaria but they didn't necessarily have to. They drew clear attention to the racist abuse and the abuse was unmistakable.
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RIDDELL (voice-over): In the first half, England's defender Tyrone Mings asked the referee if he could hear the chanting and, shortly afterwards, the game was stopped so that a stadium announcement could be made, warning to supporters that the match could be abandoned if the chanting continued.
And then towards the end of the first half, another suspension of play, this time for five minutes. During that hiatus, a large number of Bulgarian supporters were seen leaving the stadium. At halftime, the Bulgarian captain went out into the stadium to remonstrate with the supporters, urging them to cease the abuse.
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RIDDELL: The game had seemed to be in jeopardy at that point but they did manage to play the full 90 minutes without having to walk off, even though there was further abuse in the second half, notably aimed at England's Raheem Sterling.
Afterwards, England's chairman demanded a stringent investigation from European football's governing body, UEFA, and the players expressed their disappointment at the abuse but said that they were satisfied with how it was handled.
TYRONE MINGS, ENGLAND FOOTBALLER: I think we showed a great response. We showed a good togetherness and ultimately we let the football do the talking, which I think the higher powers will hopefully deal with incidents that happen. But yes, we couldn't do much more than we'd done on the pitch.
GARETH SOUTHGATE, ENGLAND MANAGER: We know it is an unacceptable situation. I think we've managed to make two statements, really, by winning the game but also we have raised the awareness of everybody to the situation.
The game was stopped twice and I know for some people that won't be enough but I think we were, as a group, on board with that process.
RIDDELL (voice-over): It remains to be seen what will happen next. But UEFA have been notoriously soft on racist abuse in the past. This felt different, though. England's players have respectfully shone a very bright light on the darker side of the beautiful game -- Don Riddell, CNN.
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WATT: England ultimately won that match 6-0 and we will get much more perspective on it in "WORLD SPORT" later this hour.
A former adviser to President Trump kicks off a busy week of hearings on Capitol Hill.
Will Fiona Hill's testimony bolster the case for the president's impeachment?
Plus, police in Texas have arrested one of their own after a fatal shooting over the weekend. Just ahead, we will find out why the victim's family is calling for a federal investigation.
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WATT: A critical week on Capitol Hill ahead as the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump picks up speed. On Monday, the president's former top Russia adviser, Fiona Hill, testified. Sources say she raised concerns that the president's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was circumventing the U.S. State Department in his dealings with Ukraine.
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WATT: One source telling CNN she saw wrongdoing related to the Ukraine policy and reported it. CNN's Lauren Fox has more.
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LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER (voice-over): The impeachment inquiry kicking off today with high-profile testimony from the president's former top adviser Fiona Hill.
Hill is the first person from the White House to testify in the inquiry trying to determine if President Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden in exchange for military aid.
Democrats hope the closed-door hearing will shed light on what role the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, played in influencing Ukraine's government. Hill was no longer serving as President Trump's top Russian adviser at the time of the controversial July 25th call with the Ukrainian president.
But, according to "The New York Times," part of her testimony today is expected to include that Giuliani was running a shadow diplomacy effort in Ukraine.
House Republicans blasting House Intel Committee Chairman Adam Schiff for issuing a subpoena to Hill, despite her willingness to testify.
REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): She was going to come. She had agreed to come. She was going to come voluntarily. But he's going to subpoena her, I believe, so he can ask certain questions and, again, keep those secret, except for the certain things that he wants to leak.
FOX: One official working on the inquiry tells CNN the subpoena was necessary because the White House has prevented so many witnesses from testifying.
This as a slew of deadlines for administration officials to hand over documents hits this week and private hearings are expected to ramp up.
On Thursday, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, is also set to testify under subpoena, where, according to "The Washington Post," he will allegedly tell members the president directed him to send a text message stating there was no quid pro quo when pressed on why the U.S. was withholding nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine.
"The Post" also reporting Sondland will testify he had no idea whether the president was telling him the truth.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent and the counsel to the State Department, Ulrich Brechbuhl, are also scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill this week, though it's unclear if they will show.
It's also unclear whether lawmakers will hear from the person at the center of the impeachment inquiry, to whistleblower. Schiff citing concerns over protecting his or her identity.
A busy week ahead for lawmakers returning from a two week recess, on Thursday, Gordon Sondland, the un ambassador is expected to come to Capitol Hill and testify under subpoena. There are also a slew of document request deadlines, including one for Rudy Giuliani and the vice president of the United States -- for CNN, I am Lauren Fox.
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WATT: Political analyst Michael Genovese joins me now from here in Los Angeles.
Michael, a little more than a year to go until the election. The Democrats seem to be cranking this, up they want this to move quickly.
What might the timetable be here?
When might we see a vote on whether to impeach the president?
MICHAEL GENOVESE, POLITICAL ANALYST: I think they want it before the new year, I think they want it because the campaign will start in earnest in January. You have the caucus in Iowa, then you have, following that, the New Hampshire primary.
And that is when the American voters are going to focus on the reelection, so I think they want to get this in early and want to make sure they can get the vote out Thanksgiving or right after if possible.
WATT: We've heard a lot of talk today about Rudy Giuliani and his role in this.
At what point do you think we might see the president throw Giuliani under the bus and claim he barely knew him and that Giuliani was just a water boy?
GENOVESE: That has been the pattern with the president, that working for him means that you have a short shelf life in employment and that your post Trump time is going to be spent hiring a lot of criminal attorneys.
But I think what you see with Rudy is that Rudy is becoming the focal point of having this rogue operation, a separate policy from Rudy, then from Pompeo. So you have this rogue operation going on.
And it has gotten so bad, that according to reports, from today, Ms. Hill talked about John Bolton being so upset he was suggesting that Rudy was a renegade, a rogue operation and warning White House lawyers that they better look into this because there may be some legal implications to this.
So Rudy is in deep trouble for a variety of reasons, so he is going to be the focal point of a lot of the inquiry from this point on. And that means the president, who has had a long time relationship with Rudy, is going to have to make a tough choice.
WATT: I do feel like we have been here before, when the Mueller report was reaching its climax.
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WATT: I mean, that ended, up you, know landing like a wet pudding for various reasons. I, mean is this different?
Is this going to be more of a problem for the president than Mueller ever was?
GENOVESE: Well, we have seen in the last two or three weeks a seismic shift. The president knows now that he is likely to be impeached and will need votes in the Senate.
And so a lot of senators now are criticizing the president for the fiasco in Syria. That has given them permission to criticize the president because the president needs their votes. He will not tweeting against the senators and so politically is much more vulnerable.
He is also more vulnerable because the legal case is starting to really pick up steam. You, know the Ukraine situation was deadly for the president and its implications are spreading wider and wider every day, as more and more testimony comes in.
And so the president is really much more vulnerable than he ever was and he is showing it. He is frazzled, he is not on his game. Instead of being the hammer, he is the nail and so he is really not playing offense the way he usually does. He's having to play defense. He does not play defense well, he does not like to play defense.
The news from the Ukraine investigation for the president is about as welcome as an ingrown toenail.
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WATT: Let's just move, finally, Michael, to the other side of the aisle. The latest Quinnipiac poll asks Democrats and Democratic leaning voters who their choice was for the nominee to face Donald Trump next year. Elizabeth Warren now on 30 percent, Joe Biden 27 percent, Bernie Sanders 11, Pete Buttigieg 8 percent, Kamala Harris 4 percent.
Is this finally down to a two-horse race?
I mean, we still have some time to go. The horses can shift, still right?
GENOVESE: Right, we have not even had the first Iowa caucus yet but I think it is narrowing down. The winnowing down process is becoming very clear in that Elizabeth Warren is marching to the front of the pack.
And if Bernie Sanders, for whatever reasons, health or otherwise, falters, a lot of his support will go to her, she becomes the presumptive favorite. So Biden has had a very bad couple of weeks. He was the front-runner, all guns are pointed at him, including the president's guns and the president can be very effective. Donald Trump could not bring his numbers up but he can bring other
people down and attacking Biden has been quite effective. He has brought Biden down a bit because of the Hunter Biden situation and Biden did not respond very effectively.
He tried to take the gloves off today, making some pronouncements, I will not have any one of my family working in the White House, et cetera. It may be too little too late. And Elizabeth Warren has run a very cautious, very deliberate campaign, a campaign based on policy and on ideas.
For most political analysts, they say that is deadly. But it seems to have had its impact. Slow and steady seems to be winning the race for Warren so far.
WATT: Michael, thank you very much as always for joining us on the show.
GENOVESE: My pleasure.
WATT: And be sure to tune in for the CNN/"New York Times" Democratic presidential debate; 12 candidates will take the stage at 8:00 pm Tuesday in New York. That is 8:00 am Wednesday in Hong Kong. And if those times don't work for you, the debate replays at 6:00 Wednesday morning in London and at 1:00 of the afternoon in Hong Kong.
Next, picking up the pieces after a typhoon brings death and destruction across Japan. We'll have an update just ahead.
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NICK WATT, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Nick Watt, live in Los Angeles. The headlines this hour.
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U.S. President Donald Trump is ordering harsh new sanctions against Turkey as Ankara pushes on with its offensive against the Kurds in northern Syria. Turkey launched the operation as U.S. troops, on the president's orders, began pulling back.
Now, the Kurds say they've reached a deal with Syria's government, and the Russian-backed Syrian forces are moving north to confront those Turkish troops.
Queen Elizabeth II has officially opened a new session of the British Parliament, her speech, not surprisingly, focused on Brexit. This week, U.K. and the E.U. negotiators will try to hammer out a Brexit agreement. Deal or no deal, Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the U.K. plans to leave the European Union on October the 31st.
And England's Football Association is demanding an investigation after Monday's Euro 2020 qualifier between England and Bulgaria had to be halted twice because of racist chanting. Most of that abuse aimed at English players, who ultimately won the match, six-nil. A major search and rescue operation is underway in Japan after a
typhoon triggered widespread flooding and landslides across the country. At least 58 people have been killed. More than a dozen are still missing. Christina MacFarlane reports now from Tokyo.
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CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Just days after Typhoon Hagibis tore through homes and infrastructure across Japan, a heartfelt apology following a harrowing rescue gone wrong.
Tokyo's Fire Department saying sorry after a seventy-seven-year-old woman in Japan's Fukushima prefecture died after falling 40 meters from a helicopter meant to carry her away from destruction caused by the massive storm.
A spokesperson for the fire department told CNN that firefighters had failed to properly hook up the woman's harness. The fire department held a press conference Monday to apologize publicly.
The woman is just one of dozens killed as the typhoon left a trail of destruction across Japan. Residential areas in Nagano prefecture in central Japan were some of the hardest hit after two nearby rivers burst their banks.
At least one house was seen collapsing into the floodwaters before drifting downstream.
A massive search and rescue operation is now underway across the country. Japanese cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga says more than 110,000 police, fire department and self-defense force staff are taking part, some searching swollen rivers for the missing.
After their match against Namibia was canceled due to the storm, Canada's rugby team was also on hand to help out, clearing debris and shoveling mud from the streets.
Some of Japan's famous Shinkansen bullet trains remained submerged in a flooded depot on Sunday, although rail services have now resumed.
Japan's meteorological agency says the storm has officially passed. Its warnings for flooding and heavy rain were set to expire late on Monday, with the risk of landslides subsiding soon after.
Christina MacFarlane, CNN, Tokyo.
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WATT: Police in South Korea believe a young K-pop star killed herself. The actress and singer Sulli, formerly of the band f(x), was found dead in her home south of Seoul. Her manager, who said he last spoke to her on Sunday, discovered her body on Monday.
Police found a note at the same but have yet to analyze its contents. And investigation is ongoing. And police in Fort Worth, Texas, say they've arrested an officer involved in the shooting of a black woman inside her own home. Over the weekend, the white officer was charged with the murder of Atatiana Jefferson.
The shooting has sparked outrage across the U.S., and now the dead woman's family wants federal authorities, not just the local police force, to investigate.
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CNN's Brian Todd has more.
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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The interim Fort Worth police chief has identified the officer who alleged shot and killed Atatiana Jefferson, as Aaron Dean, who he said had only been on the beat for a year and a half. The chief said Officer Dean resigned Monday from the force and now faces criminal charges.
ED KRAUS, FORT WORTH POLICE INTERIM CHIEF: None of this information can ease the pain of Atatiana's family, but I hope it shows the community that we take these incidents seriously.
TODD: On police body cam video, an officer is seen approaching the door of Jefferson's home in Fort Worth. The screen door is closed. The solid door is open, and the lights are on inside.
The officer walks the perimeter of the house. Then, as he approaches a window --
AARON DEAN, FORMER FORT WORTH POLICE OFFICER: Put your hands up. Show me your hands.
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TODD: The officer had fired within only a couple of seconds after shouting his verbal command, and never did he identify himself as police.
Atatiana Jefferson, 28 years old, died on the spot, in her bedroom early Saturday morning.
The Fort Worth Police are now coming under enormous scrutiny, in part because they're conducting their own investigation into Jefferson's death. Jefferson's family and their representatives say they have no trust in that, and are demanding that federal officials step in to investigate what they say are obvious breaches of protocol.
S. LEE MERRITT, ATTORNEY, ATATIANA JEFFERSON'S FAMILY: They just made common-sense mistakes. They passed an open door. They failed to announce themselves. They passed a second open door. They failed to announce themselves. They creeped around the back of the apartment and entered a closed gate.
TODD: Police say they have asked the FBI to review the shooting for possible civil rights violations.
The dispatch which sent officers wasn't even from an emergency 911 call. It was from a neighbor concerned for Atatiana Jefferson's safety.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the front doors have been open since 10 p.m. I haven't seen anybody moving around. It's not normal for them to have both of the doors open this time of night.
PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: This was a Rambo approach to, essentially, what should have been a wellness check to just see if everything was OK in the residence.
TODD: Now, that concerned neighbor, James Smith, is distraught.
JAMES SMITH, NEIGHBOR OF TATIANA JEFFERSON: I feel guilty, because had I not called the Fort Worth Police Department, my neighbor would still be alive today.
TODD: Fort Worth Police initially said the officer perceived a threat inside the house, but police are being roundly criticized for releasing this photo in the hours immediately after the shooting, a still frame of what they say was a gun in Jefferson's bedroom.
KRAUS: In hindsight, it was a bad thing to do. I think it was to show that there was a weapon involved.
TODD: But police have not said if Atatiana Jefferson was holding the gun when the officers approached.
CALLAN: By the, way it's perfectly illegal for somebody to possess a firearm in their home in Fort Worth, Texas. She has a right to protect her own home from what she probably thought were burglars in the backyard.
TODD (on camera): Fort Worth Police say the officer in question is not cooperating with investigators at the moment. The chief said the officer resigned before he was eligible to cooperate, that he was given his administrative warning on Sunday, and based on their rules, he cannot be questioned for 48 hours after that.
CNN has tried to reach out to Officer Aaron Dean for comment and has tried to contact possible police representatives for him. We have not heard back.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
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WATT: A first in the world of football. When we return, could a match between Palestinians and Saudi Arabia spur change in the Middle East?
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[00:40:50] WATT: The World Cup qualifier between Saudi Arabia and Palestine will be a first for the sport of football. In the coming hours, the two teams will play each other in Israeli-occupied territory. This marks the first time a Saudi delegation has ever traveled to the area.
The game hailed as a win by all sides, including Israel, which hopes the match will help grow diplomacy with other Arab states.
CNN's Oren Liebermann has more.
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OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sports are supposed to be above politics, but on this pitch, the football is almost a sideshow.
It's Saudi Arabia versus Palestine, playing in Israeli-occupied territory, the first ever official Saudi visit here.
Marking the historic visit, the Saudi team met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah Sunday.
YASSER AL-MISHAL, PRESIDENT, SAUDI SOCCER FOUNDATION: Since we were children, we have known and loved Palestine. We have wished and dreamt about visiting Palestine. Thank God. I consider myself very lucky to be the first president of the Saudi Federation and possibly the first Saudi official to reach the Palestinian territories.
LIEBERMANN: Saudi officials visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Islam outside of Saudi Arabia.
JIBRI RAJOUB, PALESTINIAN FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION: Saudi Arabia was always committed to our justice cause; supported us everywhere, in everything all the time.
LIEBERMANN (on camera): The match itself will be played here at Faisal Husseini Stadium, on the edge of Jerusalem. The stadium entrance faces the separation barrier, a daily reality for Palestinians living here.
In a match of two teams here, there are three sides who claim to measure a victory. The Saudis, who see this as playing for the first time ever in Palestine; the Palestinians, who see this as the Saudis standing with their cause; and even the Israelis, who see this as a measure of growing ties with the Arab states.
(voice-over): Arab teams have played here before. Iraq played a friendly here last year, and the United Arab Emirates played a match here in 2015. But that same year, the Saudis refused to play here, saying it would be normalizing ties with Israel. When asked why come here now, the coach of the Saudi team shifted the conversation back to football.
HERVE RENARD, MANAGER, SAUDI ARABIA: If we can have one world with peace and -- everywhere, it would be perfect. Of course, it's not the case, but we are not a politician. We are football players and coaches.
LIEBERMANN: It might be easy to read too much into this match, but like Israel's Judo team competing in Abu Dhabi for the first time one year ago, this symbolism matters. Right now, sports is out in front of politics. The question is whether the politics cares to follow.
Oren Liebermann, CNN, Faisal Husseini Stadium.
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WATT: Thanks for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Nick Watt, live in Los Angeles. WORLD SPORT starts right after this break.
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