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Harris Preps For Debate In Pittsburgh, Trump Campaigns In Wisconsin; Protests In Israel Mark 11 Months Of Gaza War; 14-Year-Old Colt Gray Charged With 4 Counts Of Felony Murder; Ukraine: "Another Massive Drone Attack" On Kyiv Thwarted; Heads Of U.S., U.K. Intelligence Agencies Make Rare Joint Appearance To Address Global Concerns; CIA Chief Dodges Question About Ballistic Missiles In Russia; "Dragon Drones" Rain Molten Metal On Russia Positions; U.S. & E.U. Warn Of Increased Risk Of Terror Attacks; Police Pressured Man To Confess To Murder That Never Happened. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired September 07, 2024 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:00]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: You're on the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jessica Dean in New York.

In just three days, on Tuesday night, former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will face off for the first time on a debate stage. Right now Trump is holding a rally in the battleground state of Wisconsin, while Harris is holed up in Pennsylvania with a team of advisers preparing for this matchup against Trump. But the vice president did take a break to meet with some small business owners and voters at a pie shop in Pittsburgh.

We're going to have more on that in just a moment, but first, we're going to go to Alayna Treene, who is there at the Trump rally in Wisconsin.

Alayna, has he said anything about the debates so far?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jessica, he's actually almost two hours into this speech and he's only made one mention of the debate, and it was very briefly. Just to ask people in the crowd if they are excited and if they would be watching, but otherwise he moved on to the rest of his speech.

But, look, Jessica, there's a key reason why he's in Wisconsin today and you can hear him, sorry, he's very loud behind me wrapping this up right now. But he is in Wisconsin because this is a crucial battleground. Remember, Donald Trump won this state in 2016, and it helped propel him to the White House, but he lost it to Biden in 2020, and his team, when I talk to his senior advisers, they say they really do view Wisconsin as being crucial to Donald Trump's pathway to securing 270 electoral votes in November.

However, with Kamala Harris now at the top of the ticket, she has been gaining a lot of ground in Wisconsin in recent polls, including a recent CNN poll, actually show her pulling higher than Joe Biden. So Donald Trump is going to be here a lot between now and November, less than two months away.

Now, Jessica, Donald Trump did make some sort of news today. He mentioned for the first time that he actually supports modifying the 25th Amendment in order to be able to have a vice president be impeached if they do not raise alarm bells of whether the president himself is -- the president him or herself, I should say, are maybe unfit to serve.

I want you to take a listen to what exactly he said there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And finally I will support modifying the 25th Amendment to make clear that if a vice president lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the incapacity of the president of the United States, if you do that with a coverup of the president of the United States, it's grounds for impeachment immediately and removal from office.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: So as you heard him say there, Jessica, he said it would be grounds for impeachment and immediate removal. But I think, you know, we would remind viewers that that doesn't just mean if Kamala Harris. That's also if Donald Trump wins, he would do that, and he could himself be putting himself in such a position.

But just to get back to your question, Jessica, about the debate, we know that Donald Trump, even though he and his team are very averse to the term preparation, he has been preparing for this Tuesday debate behind the scenes. They actually view this speech itself as a form of debate prep. He's been walking through different policy behind the scenes with his team, tried to walk through different topics during these events.

And we also know he has been meeting with policy experts and senior advisers to really pick their brains and hone and sharpen his focus on many of the key things they expect will come up. He's also been meeting with people like Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who recently endorsed Donald Trump. She actually faced off with Kamala Harris back in 2020 during the Democratic primary debate.

And she's been helping Donald Trump get a better understanding of what it's like to go up against Harris. So he is debating behind the scenes despite them not wanting to say that he is doing so -- Jessica.

DEAN: All right. Alayna Treene, for us live from Wisconsin. Thank you so much for that, Alayna.

Let's go now to Pittsburgh where Vice President Harris is fine tuning her message and preparing for that debate with Trump. CNN's Eva McKend is traveling with the Harris campaign. She joins us now from Pittsburgh.

So the question is, Eva, how is the vice president preparing? EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jess, these

strategy largely seems to be to hunker down here at the Omni and strenuously appear with -- prepare, rather, with a small group of trusted advisers. But also key to that strategy, Jess, is to anchor herself here in Pittsburgh in this pivotal battleground state where in her downtime she can get facetime with battleground voters. She spoke today to that recent endorsement from the Cheneys, Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney. Here's how she's thinking about this.

[16:05:05]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: People are exhausted about the division and the attempts to kind of divide us as Americans, and them stepping up to make this public statement I think is courageous but also for people like the folks that I was just talking with, it really reinforces for them that we love our country and we have more in common than what separates us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKEND: Now, Jess, no doubt she is going through anticipated questions with her team, maybe combing through the former president's past statements.

Pennsylvania, Jess, President Biden only won this state in 2020 by about 80,000 votes. So it makes all the more sense that she is anchoring herself here in the pivotal days before the debate and in the final days before the election -- Jess.

DEAN: Yes. And the local media can report on that as well, get it out to voters.

Eva, the Harris campaign also announcing another eye-popping fundraising haul for the month of July, nearly triple the amount raised by the Trump campaign. Walk us through these numbers.

MCKEND: Yes. $361 million for the month of August alone, Jess. It's quite a significant amount of money and though money isn't everything, it does allow the vice president to compete in a very specific way. So rather than be reliant on these big glitzy fundraisers, she can do things like these smaller stops and have these intimate stops with voters as well as rallies, and then also do things like a shore up field staff as well as the field offices across the country, and then engage in this robust digital and ad campaign that we have seen as well.

So it's a lot of money. Money isn't everything, but certainly they believe that they're well-positioned -- Jess.

DEAN: All right, Eva McKend for us in Pittsburgh. Thank you so much for that reporting.

Joining us now CNN senior political analyst and senior editor at "The Atlantic," Ron Brownstein. Ron, good to see you.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Good to see you.

DEAN: Here we are, just a few days before this debate. The last one we had led to unprecedented change in this race.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

DEAN: Walk us through what you think is at stake this time?

BROWNSTEIN: You know, when you talk to political scientists or political operatives, the general view is that debates usually don't matter that much, except that sometimes they matter enormously. And, you know, I was talking to one Democratic consultant this week who said that he was once in a meeting with some of the parties' leading kind of number crunchers, what he called the quants who work on election modelling.

And they inputted all of this data to try to determine when a presidential debate has mattered versus when it is not, and basically found there's no real way to predict. Having said that, I think we can pretty safely predict that this one is going to matter largely because voters are still pretty shallow in their impressions of Vice President Harris. She has made a very positive first impression, her favorable- unfavorable rating is better than Biden's, better than Trump's, better than anybody on either ticket at this point.

But those impressions are still pretty shallow. So in many ways, this is as much a job interview for her with this big, broad audience that she's going to have as it is a debate and encounter with the former president.

DEAN: Yes. I thought it was interesting that former secretary of state, and of course, former candidate for president, Hillary Clinton, who debated Trump, told "The New York Times" Harris should not be baited. She should bait him. Further on in that piece, we had advisers telling -- they had advisers telling Trump, be happy, don't, don't, you know, don't lose your cool. Do you think all of that is good advice on both sides?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. You know, first of all, when debate -- as we said, debates haven't always mattered, many of them have kind of faded away as soon as they were over. But when they have mattered, it's usually been because they reveal something about the character and the capacity of the candidates more than one side winning an issue argument.

Think of Ronald Reagan with there you go again in 1980, he kind of dispelling the idea of him as a scary, a warmonger, or George H.W. Bush checking his watch against Bill Clinton, or Ross Perot in '92 and kind of confirming the idea that he essentially had run out of energy and out of time. And I think that is the key for Harris here. I mean, she has projected a kind of both a confidence and an energy and a forward-looking message less so, you know, focusing on sharp issue distinctions with Trump more about turning the page on the Trump era. And, you know, Biden emulated in that debate. But Trump, as it went

on, became increasingly incoherent himself. So I mean, there is an opportunity for her to basically embody the message that she represents the future. And he is, we're not going back, as they say, the past.

DEAN: And before we let you go, we don't have a ton of time, but we did release this new polling this week on a number of battleground states.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

[16:10:02]

DEAN: What were your takeaways? What did you learn from those numbers?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, the basic story before Biden left the race was that he was largely holding his 2020 support among white voters and his position had eroded because he had lost so much ground with non-white voters, black and Hispanic men in particular.

Look at those numbers. You can see that Harris is very, also very close to the winning numbers that Biden put up in 2020 among white voters in the key swing states, except for Arizona, where CNN has her losing some ground. She may be a little below where he was with non- college whites, but a little better with college whites. She's improved a lot among those non-white voters, but still is not back to where she was.

And that means her pathway is still more secure through the former blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, in all likelihood, than it is through the southwest states. She looks like she's in a pretty strong position in both Michigan and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or the combination of Georgia and Nevada look like the tipping point in this election. And boy, when I look at those numbers, we go back to where we were a month ago, it was as good a campaign, or as Tim Walz says, it was a very big gamble not to pick the popular governor of Pennsylvania as your running mate, looking at the possibility of Pennsylvania being the tipping point state.

DEAN: It's just so close according to these polls in Pennsylvania as it so often has been in these recent cycles.

Ron Brownstein, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having me.

DEAN: Vice President Harris and former president Trump sharing the stage for the debate. Follow CNN for complete coverage and exclusive analysis both before and after that debate. The ABC News presidential debate simulcast starts Tuesday at 9:00 Eastern here on CNN.

And still ahead, outrage across Israel as thousands take to the streets to demand Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finalize a hostage release deal 11 months after Hamas first kidnapped those hostages.

You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:16:43]

DEAN: Breaking news now, protesters gathering once again in the streets of Tel Aviv demanding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree to a hostage deal with Hamas. Hamas also has yet to accept any deal. Today, marking 11 months since the Hamas attack on October 7th.

CNN's Matthew Chance is on the streets of Tel Aviv.

And Matthew, what have you seen throughout the night? It's now 11:50 -- 11:16 p.m. where you are.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: It is indeed. And you can see the crowd has started to thin out considerably, although there are still a couple of hundred people here outside the Defense Ministry in the center of Tel Aviv, calling for an immediate negotiation, immediate peace deal in fact. An immediate deal, a hostage deal actually lead to get the 101 Israeli hostages that are still inside the Gaza Strip, out of the hands of Hamas and the other militant groups and back to Israel.

It's a political protest as well because it is very much blaming the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to secure that negotiation, of that hostage swap up until this point. They're saying basically, the protesters here, that Netanyahu is privileging his own political survival over the welfare of the hostages. And they're calling for him to change strategy and to do whatever it takes to get that deal, whatever it is, bring those people back home, and then sort out the other sort of ambitions that he has in terms of destroying Hamas and providing continuing security for Israelis in the future.

That's something Netanyahu has so far rejected. But you can see throughout the night there has been, you know, thousands of people coming out onto the streets of Tel Aviv to demand exactly that, and we'll see whether the government here starts to listen.

DEAN: All right. Matthew Chance for us there live in the streets of Tel Aviv. Thank you so much for that reporting.

And when we come back, how the community of Winder, Georgia, is mourning and honoring the four people killed in this week's school shooting.

You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:23:21]

DEAN: The community of Winder, Georgia, is still trying to process the deadly school shooting that devastated the town this week. Last night a vigil was held so people can come together and mourn the two students and two teachers killed when a 14-year-old student opened fire at Apalachee High School.

More than 100 motorcyclists rode to school this morning to support the students and the community. It's not clear yet when the high school will be able to hold classes again, and we do know the shooting suspect is still behind bars so is his father, Colin Gray, who's been charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children.

Colin Gray has not yet entered any plea. He told investigators he bought the gun used in the shooting, an AR-15 rifle, for his son as a Christmas gift last year. That was seven months after police accused the shooting suspect at the age of 13 of posting threats online about, quote, "shooting up a middle school."

Clark Cunningham is a law professor at Georgia State University. He joins us now to talk more about this.

Clark, as we continue to get more information, and we're putting all these pieces together, what are your thoughts on this particular school shooting?

CLARK CUNNINGHAM, LAW PROFESSOR, GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY: Afternoon, Jessica. I think what we -- the most important thing for all of us to do and particularly for our political leaders to do is to perform a kind of reverse engineering on this tragedy. I don't think we should assume that it was inevitable or just think that because it was committed by somebody who's perhaps they called the monster.

Rather we should see if it could have been prevented by things that could've been done. And several things that we should think about, what is in Georgia, it was legal for the father to give that AR-15 rifle to his 13-year-old son.

[16:25:12]

Could have done it with a handgun, but because it was a weapon that had more than 12-inch barrel, apparently Georgia law wouldn't have prevented that from happening.

Well, that's something that I think our leaders should take a look at. Another thing I think is to consider what Michigan did after a similar shooting happened up there and the parents were held responsible and convicted of involuntary manslaughter. And that is to pass legislation requiring people who have minors in the home to keep their guns either in a safe or with a trigger lock hence establishing criminal penalties if people were hurt as a result of failing to do that.

DEAN: And this is another example where we're seeing parents being legally held accountable for what their children are doing. You just alluded to that. We did see that in Michigan. Michigan law allows for the prosecution of adults who leave guns unlocked and accessible in their homes. Do you think that that -- if we're talking about reversed engineering is it things like that that could prevent this from happening again?

CUNNINGHAM: Well, obviously, if Colt Gray didn't have the gun, none of this would have happened. So the clearest thing you can do is to try to keep an AR-15 out of the hands of someone who's a threat to others, particularly to school children. So there's a question of whether someone of his age should have been allowed to own such a dangerous weapon. And also whether someone of his age had unsupervised access to his parents' weapons and was able to commit crimes because of it.

We don't really have good laws in Georgia yet about this. The prosecutor is trying to kind of patch things together out of the laws we have. But I think we'll be much better now that we've seen what's happened for us to do what Michigan and some other states have done, and write laws that directly address this problem.

DEAN: And authorities are saying they're going to charge the shooter as an adult. What legally is the difference in charging him as an adult instead of charging him as a juvenile?

CUNNINGHAM: Well, he's in the adult system, the court system. He's not in juvenile court. The only thing is because he is under 18, he doesn't face the death penalty but he certainly could be looking at life without parole, maybe several times over for the deaths that he caused.

DEAN: All right. Clark Cunningham, thank you so much for your analysis here. We really appreciate it.

CUNNINGHAM: Glad to speak with you, Jessica.

DEAN: Still ahead, Ukraine manages to repel another massive wave of Russian drones targeting several cities.

You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:32:33]

DEAN: Ukraine's military says it managed to foil another massive Russian drone attack overnight. New images showing drone debris scattered outside Ukraine's parliament building.

Ukraine's Air Force saying it shot down 58 of the 67 Russian drones targeting multiple cities, including Kyiv.

The strike coming as details emerge of Iran transferring short-range ballistic missiles to Russia.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen is joining us now live from Ukraine.

Fred, what more can you tell us?

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, there, Jessica. This is extremely interesting, especially in the context of the fact that we have seen a lot of aerial attacks by the Russians over the past, I would, say two weeks or so, where things have drastically escalated.

Not like those -- not just those drones that you we're just speaking about, which was 67 drones in total that the Ukrainians say that they detected. And this was across 11 regions of Ukraine. They say most of those were, in fact, shot down.

You were speaking about some of the debris that landed close to the parliament in Kyiv. However, those missile attacks have also been something that the Ukrainians have been dealing with as well.

And we have two U.S. sources claiming that the Iranians have already transferred missile technology and ballistic missiles to the Russians. That, of course, would be a drastic escalation of the military cooperation between those two countries.

One of the things that we need to point out is that the Iranians, they haven't commented on this so far. But in the past, they have denied giving missiles a to the Russians and even giving drones to the Russians as well.

Nevertheless, of course, this is a huge topic and it was a major topic in a conversation with the MI6 chief of the United Kingdom and the CIA director.

I want to listen in to some of what they had to say about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL BURNS, CIA DIRECTOR: Should Iran ship ballistic missiles or whatever kind close range or other kinds, it would be a dramatic escalation of the nature of that defense partnership.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But it hasn't yet.

BURNS: All I'll say is that it would be a dramatic escalation.

RICHARD MOORE, MI6 CHIEF: Really important to remind ourselves, isn't it, with the drones that they definitely are there. I mean, if it's stuff goes onto the battlefield, Rula (ph), it will become very obvious very quickly. I mean, the stuff lands, it explodes, it kills Ukrainians, civilians, it destroys the electricity infrastructure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PLEITGEN: Now the Ukrainians have also commented on this. They say that they are very concerned about those reports that have come out. And they certainly have warned, once again, the Ukrainians (sic) not to get military technology, specifically missile technology to the Russians.

[16:35:08]

Of course, this is a big issue for Ukrainian cities, for Ukrainian critical infrastructure. And the Ukrainians have said the only way for them to deal with this is for more -- with more air defense systems that they urgently want from the U.S. and its allies.

But also with less restrictions on some of the longer-distance weapons that the Ukrainians have already gotten from the U.S., like, for instance, those ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles -- Jessica?

DEAN: And, Fred, I also want to ask you about these videos that are emerging. They show a fleet of fire-spewing Dragon Drones. They dropped molten metal over Russian-held positions in Kharkiv.

What does this mean for Ukraine's strategy on the battlefield? And what more can you tell us? We're looking at video of them right now.

PLEITGEN: Yes. I think I think those Dragon Drones, as some in Ukraine call them, those would -- fire-spewing essentially drones certainly are something that right now is still in a trial stage.

I would say there's a few units that we know that have used them. They go by various names, by the way. Some people call them flame-thrower drones. There's actually one unit that calls them Perune's (ph) Fire. Perune (ph) is the ancient Slavic god the thunder.

So certainly something where the Ukrainians say this can definitely put fear into some of the Russian units on the ground.

One of the Ukrainian units that we've been speaking to, they confirmed that the substance it's being dropped is a highly incendiary substance. It's thermite, which is indeed a mix of metal and aluminum that, of course, is highly incendiary.

It can burn at around 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. And definitely, of course, very dangerous to any people that are underneath it, and also, of course, to any weapons that might be stored there as well.

As I'm speaking to you right now, we can see, once again, how that air campaign is unfolding. What you're hearing there is air raid sirens that are going off here in central Ukraine, once again -- Jessica?

DEAN: All right, be careful.

Fred Pleitgen, live in Ukraine with real-time reporting there, thank you so much for that.

Let's talk more about that unprecedented meeting between the heads of the CIA and Britain's MI6. CIA Chief Bill Burns and MI6 Chief Richard Moore in London discussing foreign policy issues, security issues, including Ukraine and the war in Gaza.

Director Burns urging Israel and Hamas to find a path to a truce.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL BURNS, CIA DIRECTOR: Ninety percent of the paragraphs have been agreed to. But in any negotiations I have been involved, the last 10 percent is the last 10 percent for a reason because it's the hardest part to do.

This is ultimately a question of political will. Whether or not leaders on both sides are prepared to recognize that enough is enough, and that the time has come finally to make some hard choices and some difficult compromises. (END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: Let's talk more with CNN national security analyst, Peter Bergen.

Peter, thanks so much for joining us today.

I have a number of things I'd like to get to.

But let's start first with this joint public appearance that comes at a very volatile time in the world. It has been a volatile season.

What message do you think the intelligence heads were wanting to send by doing this? It is rare to see them together talking like this publicly.

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, I think it's unprecedented that the head of MI6 and the head of the CIA do a joint public appearance on the record.

And you know, I thought what Bill Burns said about the Gaza negotiations is quite interesting. I mean, he's been intimately involved in all those negotiations.

Clearly, you know, we've heard 100 times or at least dozens of times that a deal is close. He sounded, implying that a deal is close. But as you know, we've been here before and, you know, I don't think anybody is holding their breath, including Bill Burns.

But I think also the fact that the Ukrainians continue to take losses in eastern Ukraine with the Russians pushing forward and then, of course, Ukrainians themselves are now in Russian territory.

And I think NATO, the United States and Britain obviously being a key part of NATO have been very supportive of Ukraine.

Both intelligence heads are surely aware that a very important American election is coming up. And on one side, you have President Trump, who has repeatedly denigrated NATO, including British leaders.

And John Bolton, his own former national security adviser, says that he would like to pull out of NATO. Now whether he would do that for real or not. He can certainly undercut it by his public statements.

So I think, yes, that's the context in which this is happening, which is there is concern in Europe about what the United States plans to do if -- if -- under a Harris administration, it's somewhat predictable, I think. More or less, a continuation of the Biden policy.

But under Trump, it would be much less predictable.

DEAN: And we'll wait to see how that election is going to play out.

I want to talk to you, too, about the headlines we've been seeing. It seems like there's been a recent spate of headlines.

[16:40:04]

There has been about U.S. operations against ISIS. This week, the U.S. capturing an ISIS leader who helped escapees of the terror group after they fled a detention facility in Syria.

Last week, seven U.S. troops were injured in a raid in Iraq that killed 15 ISIS operatives.

Peter, do you think we are seeing more of U.S. forces and U.S. intelligence focusing in on ISIS? Are we just hearing about it more? How are you kind of taking all this in?

BERGEN: Well, just because, you know, there's been a discussion between the United States and Iraq about the 2,500 American troops that are posted in Iraq. Now, that discussion has gone on for a long time.

But earlier this year, I think it was in June, that Iraqi prime minister was here in Washington to discuss the potential withdrawal in Iraq of troops. I don't think -- I think quite a lot of people in Iraq don't necessarily want American troops to withdraw.

The last time U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq in 2011, complete -- three years later, ISIS was almost at the gates of Baghdad. So I mean, that's still a pretty fresh memory is lot of Iraqis minds.

However, there is this discussion now where, you're right, I mean, we are seeing more or activity. What does it mean? Is it potentially because people know that the United States maybe withdrawing at some point relatively soon and they're kind of doing more operations or is it just sort of targets of opportunity.

The other thing that I think is which it is important to note is we are also seeing a lot of ISIS-inspired either plots that have been averted or actually happened.

And the more ISIS seems powerful in Iraq or Syria, the more inspirational it is to people like the guy in Germany who stabbed three Germans to death just about 10 days ago in the name of ISIS.

We just had an arrest in Canada of somebody who was planning apparently to try and attack a synagogue or a Jewish center in Brooklyn around October 7th, the first anniversary of the Gaza war.

And so it's important that the califate, so-called geographical caliphate of ISIS, doesn't expand because that's an inspirational thing to the people who never will go to Iraq or Syria but will act in the name of ISIS.

And we see more of that of late, including, of course, the teenagers that were planning to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna.

DEAN: And to that point, we've seen so much online radicalization. It's so much easier to do that with the Internet and online access being what it is now. But to your point, they don't have to travel these places to become radicalized. They can do that online. And we also are hearing from current and former U.S. officials this summer who are saying, in a sense, that there are lights flashing about concerns for a potential terrorist attack here on U.S. soil.

Do you agree with that assessment? And what kind of factor does that online radicalization, the lone wolf of it all, kind of fit into that?

BERGEN: I think it's incredibly important. I mean, the people that we're planning to attack the Taylor Swift concert had never been to Iraq or Syria, but they we're clearly radicalized by ISIS propaganda.

And we -- is there a possibility of it happening in the United States? Well, certainly the arrest of this guy, Mohammed Kahn, in Canada, who was allegedly planning to carry out an attack in Brooklyn around October 7th, I think speaks for itself.

Now how developed was his plan? I mean, luckily, he was talking to two undercover officers and he divulged his plan. And it didn't seem -- he was looking for weapons. He hadn't acquired them.

But October 7th itself has been radicalizing and sort of inspirational for a lot of these groups, including ISIS and al-Qaeda.

So, you know, clearly, I mean, U.S. law enforcement is concerned about ISIS want-to-bes or ISIS copycats. We saw a lot of that, by the way, in 2015 and 2016 with the most lethal terrorist attack in American history.

The jihadist terrorist attacks, since 911, happened in Orlando, Florida, where an ISIS supporter, who had never been to Iraq or Syria and he killed 49 people in the Pulse nightclub on a Saturday night.

So you know, the online radicalization is, you know, it's there. And you know, there are plenty of people who are looking for a cause of some kind and this may be appealing to them. And unfortunately, they may act.

And it's hard also -- you mentioned the word "lone wolf," a lone actor. It's hard to get inside somebody's mind. I mean, there are lots of people looking at ISIS propaganda. Probably 98 percent of them will do nothing about it.

DEAN: But, again, how do you know which one is the one.

(CROSSTALK)

DEAN: Peter Bergen, it's so interesting. Thank you for this. I wish we had more time, but we'll leave it there.

Thanks so much for your time. We appreciate it.

BERGEN: Thank you, Jessica.

[16:44:54]

DEAN: And we'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DEAN: A man called police, asking for help looking for his missing father. After 17 hours of interrogation, he confessed that he killed his dad. But it turned out his father was alive all along and there was no murder.

Shimon Prokupecz has the story you'll see only on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In August 2018, Tom Perez called Fontana, California, police to report his elderly father missing.

[16:50:00]

911 OPERATOR: Hello, this CSO Pina the Fontana Police.

We're going to put him in the system right now as a missing person.

PROKUPECZ: But 36 hours later, Perez was placed on a psychiatric hold for trying to take his own life. And the Fontana Police Department had gotten him to admit to a murder he never committed.

TOM PEREZ, PRESSURED TO CONFESS TO HIS FATHER MURDER AFTER 17-HOUR INTERROGATION: I was now in their little box of horrors, their little box, as they call it.

PROKUPECZ: Perez has never publicly spoken about what happened, until now, to CNN.

PEREZ: I felt like they were my captors and I had nothing. There was nothing I could do.

PROKUPECZ: Detectives at the Fontana Police Department brought Perez in for questioning over his missing father. He soon became their prime suspect.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really concerning to me that he hasn't been back yet.

PROKUPECZ: They were convinced Perez's father had been murdered at the home the two shared. Police said Perez appeared suspicious. And they suspected a violent act based on broken furniture, and that some of his father's things were discarded.

They also said they found some blood evidence inside the home. Perez told police the mess was from home renovations and they were getting rid of things before selling it.

After searching the home, police asked him to go to the station. That's when detectives turned a missing persons call into a 17-hour interrogation to get a confession.

When they were not successful, they recruited Perez's close friend to help.

UNIDENTIFIED FRIEND: (INAUDIBLE)

PEREZ: Impossible.

PROKUPECZ: When the friend, who later said he regretted his involvement, didn't get a confession, the interrogators brought his pet dog, Margo, into the room.

UNIDENTIFIED DETECTIVE: And killed him. He's dead. And your, dog sitting here looking at you knowing that you killed your dad.

PROKUPECZ: Detectives suggested that Margo might need to be put down after witnessing such a traumatic event.

PEREZ: Just wanted to hope, not let go.

And then they took her out of the room sometime after that. Felt like the end of the world for me.

We're up here.

JEFF NOBLE, POLICE EXPERT HIRED BY PEREZ: I've never, ever seen a situation where the police bring a dog this size through the police department. They transport it there, walk it through the police department, bring it into interrogation room and use it as a tool in order to seek a confession.

It's unconscionable. It's simply unconscionable.

PROKUPECZ: Throughout the interrogation, Perez says he was suffering from mental health issues but was denied medical help.

EVANS: Either bring me my doctor or bring me to the E.R.

UNIDENTIFIED DETECTIVE: You don't need to go to the E.R.

PROKUPECZ: In the footage CNN reviewed, police lead a sleep deprived and exasperated Perez into a confession.

UNIDENTIFIED DETECTIVE: Did you stab him?

EVANS: I think that I did.

UNIDENTIFIED DETECTIVE: What did you do? Where would you have stabbed him?

EVANS: Maybe in the belly.

JERRY STEERING, PEREZ'S LAWYER: They got him to affirm suggestions they made to him like, well, you stabbed him. OK, I stabbed him.

PROKUPECZ: Distraught, psychologically being overwhelmed with grief, Perez says he tried to take his own life using his shoelace.

EEVANS: They attacked me right at the very thing that I loved most, my fur baby and my father. And it didn't seem like there's anything left. I couldn't see the reason to continue with more pain.

PROKUPECZ: But his father wasn't dead.

EVANS: Margo, I believe, was following me.

PROKUPECZ: Police learned from Perez's sister that their father was unharmed but Perez remained in the interrogation room.

STEERING: They learned that Tom's father was alive and well and was at LAX Airport ready to take a flight to go visit his sister.

They didn't have the nerve to look him in the face. They didn't have the nerve to tell him his dad was OK.

EVANS: They left me in that mental anguish and just suffer continually.

PROKUPECZ: Police put them on a psychiatric hold at a hospital where, days later, he finally learned his father is alive.

EVANS: A young -- a younger nurse came over to my bedside and says, I know it's -- it does say in your file that not to speak to anybody, any family members, but your dad's on the phone.

And I'm like, what! She handed the phone to me and I just dropped to the floor crying because he's --

PROKUPECZ: Five days of hell after he called the police for help, he is reunited with his father.

THOMAS PEREZ SR, FATHER OF TOM PEREZ: And he said, dad, is that you, is that really you? I said yes. We had tears in our eyes.

[16:55:06]

PROKUPECZ: Seeking accountability for what he endured, Perez filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Fontana.

NOBLE: Police officers are trained that they can engage in deception. But when you go over the line and you engage in deceptive action that would cause an innocent person to confess to a crime they didn't commit, that -- that's where the line is crossed.

PROKUPECZ: One of the detectives defended his actions in a deposition video exclusively obtained by CNN.

SGT. KYLE GUTHRIE, DETECTIVE ON PEREZ CASE: I don't think that the police warn would say we did anything wrong. We were just attempting to get some information from Mr. Perez.

And then we had been with Mr. Perez all day and we're running out of things to say to him to try to get the answer about where his father was located.

PROKUPECZ: There is no indications that there has been an internal review. And none of the officers involved have been disciplined. Several have been promoted.

Earlier this year, Perez settled with the city for $900,000. The city issued a statement to CNN saying, "The settlement included no finding of wrongdoing."

The city added that "Perez was not isolated as claimed. He was given his medication and fed multiple times."

For Perez and his father, the trauma continues.

PEREZ: No amount of compensation will ever compensate me for what I went through, ever.

PROKUPECZ: Shimon Prokupecz, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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