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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Peaceful Protests in Ferguson; National Guard Pulling Out of Ferguson; Hagel: ISIS "Beyond Anything We Have Seen"; Gaza Airstrikes Kill 3 Hamas Commanders

Aired August 22, 2014 - 04:30   ET

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

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VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: A calm night in Ferguson, Missouri. Protesters peacefully demonstrating over the deadly police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. The state's governor says the National Guard is no longer needed to stop the violence in the streets. What has changed in the past two nights? As Brown's heartbroken parents explain what needs to happen for them to have some peace.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: A terror organization beyond anything the U.S. has ever seen. An alarming warning this morning about the Islamic militants who murdered a kidnapped American journalist, what makes them so powerful and so dangerous -- as the U.S. hunts for the British jihadist who killed James Foley. We've got live team coverage from Iraq and London, ahead.

Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.

BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell, in for John Berman. We're half past the hour now and we welcome all our viewers here in the U.S. and around the world.

No more tear gas, no more chaos, and the streets of Ferguson are calm this morning. Governor Jay Nixon orders National Guard troops to systematically withdraw from the embattled Missouri town. Demonstrators in the dozens now, instead of the thousands. The mood there is more measured, but the anger remains, nearly two weeks after the shooting death of Michael Brown.

Here is Stephanie Elam.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Victor and Christine, another peaceful night here in Ferguson. Protesters took to the streets, but they stayed calm. The police also stayed out of their way. In fact, we listened to Captain Ron Johnson talk about how the night went. Here is what he had to say.

CAPT. RON JOHNSON, MISSOURI HIGHWAY PATROL: We also experimented with pulling cars back from the street to allow more room for marching. That trend is continuing. We had to respond to few incidents tonight. There were no Molotov cocktails tonight, no fires, no shootings. We did not see a single handgun.

Again, tonight, we deployed no smoke devices, no tear gas and no mace. And again tonight, no police officer fired a single shot.

ELAM: Captain Johnson also said that there were seven arrests last night. Compare that to two nights ago when they had 47 arrests. And he said, of those seven, three were from Detroit, the other four did come from the St. Louis area.

But, overall, they're saying, things continue to improve. And he credit that to not just the police changing their tactics, but also to the clergy and to the elders in the community, as well as the young people, for doing their part to keep nerves calm.

And you could definitely feel it on the streets. The energy was much different today. You could feel it was calmer, the police looked more relaxed.

We also spent some time at the memorial, at the location where Mike Brown died. And the energy there was pretty solemn. People were stopping by to leave candles, and to drop off flowers.

And at one point, there was a prayer group that showed up. They came up singing a spiritual. They sang for a bit, they prayed for a bit, and then they kept on walking.

We saw another group arrived, and they came with flowers. And quietly, they just lay down flower after flower, down the street, along the way back to Florissant, West Florissant Avenue, which has been the hubbub of so much of this tension, just handing them out to people standing by. An effort to bring peace back to this community and for the people who were there, a moment and a place where they could focus on Mike Brown and remember him and the loss of life that did happen almost two weeks ago now -- Christine and Victor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: All right. Stephanie Elam, thanks for that.

Michael Brown's mother says her face-to-face meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder mattered. Lesley McSpadden telling CNN's Anderson Cooper, Holder promised her a fair and thorough investigation into the shooting death of her son. She says the attorney general helped restore some of her trust in the authorities. But the family says the void left behind by the death of their son is very difficult to cope with.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: This is obviously every parent's worst nightmare. How do you get through each day?

MICHAEL BROWN, SR., MICHAEL BROWN'S FATHER: I don't. Just glad -- as we see him physically moving around again. My life, that's a heartbreaker for me. Painful. I just -- I can't really explain how I feel about this. COOPER: Lesley, does it seem real?

LESLEY MCSPADDEN, MICHAEL BROWN'S MOTHER: Nope.

COOPER: It still doesn't? How are you getting through each day?

MCSPADDEN: Prayer. Family. Support.

COOPER: You both met with the attorney general yesterday, Eric Holder, how was that? What did he say to you?

MCSPADDEN: He just kind of talked to us from a man with kids himself perspective.

COOPER: He talked to you as a parent?

MCSPADDEN: Yes.

BROWN: Yes.

COOPER: Did it help?

BROWN: It helped me, because he has our support. He's supporting us. He said he's not going to stop. He's going to help us all the way through.

COOPER: Did it make a difference that he came here, that he looked you in the eye and met with you privately?

BROWN: Yes.

MCSPADDEN: Yes, he did to me.

BROWN: Yes.

COOPER: In what way?

MCSPADDEN: Because you can read the person. When you looking at them and they looking at you, it put some trust back there that you lost. And he did ensure it will be a fair and thorough investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: That pain, unimaginable.

A critical witness, though, in the case was arrested in 2011 for theft and making a false report to police. And there's a warrant for his arrest right now in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Twenty-two-year-old Dorian Johnson who was with Brown the day he was killed claims the unarmed teenager was shot while running away from police with his hands up. Now, in the summer of 2011, police claimed Johnson lied about his identity, and age and address when being questioned about stealing a woman's backpack.

Now, here is what Johnson's attorney is saying. "Dorian Johnson's past transgressions do not change these facts nor do they justify Officer Wilson's grotesque deadly violation of Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson's civil rights.

Now, of course, some would ask, why is this relevant to the story? Well, because so much of the story, originally, was based on Dorian Johnson's account. He was with Michael Brown that night, and because he now has this charge from 2011, as it relates to telling the story to police or lying to police. That's why it's important here. If it'd been something else, maybe not. But that's why it's relevant to the story.

Of course, you want to stay with CNN all morning for continuing coverage of the very latest developments in Ferguson, Missouri.

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ROMANS: A chilling eye-opening warning from the Defense Department about this terror ISIS. Senior Pentagon officials describe the organization as apocalyptic and an imminent threat.

Listen to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at a briefing on Thursday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHUCK HAGEL, DEFENSE SECRETARY: ISIL is a sophisticated and well- funded as any group that we have seen. They are beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, sophistication of strategic and tactical military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded. Oh, this is beyond anything that we have seen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: U.S. airstrikes on ISIS targets continue in Iraq. But Secretary Hagel warns defeating the terrorist group won't be possible unless its presence in Syria is addressed. But he would not say whether that meant the U.S. considering wider strikes.

Jomana Karadsheh monitoring the latest developments live from Baghdad.

And here is the thing about ISIS. This is a group that is well-funded as the secretary of defense said, controlling oil fields, able to generate its own revenue from kidnappings, ransom and from oil in the region. And it doesn't recognize boundaries the way the international community does. Really amazing how quickly it has gained so much territory from Syria to Iraq.

JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Christine. Over the past couple months, ISIS really looked like it was unstoppable here in Iraq, making real gains, controlling entire cities.

ROMANS: We have lost her feed. You can see the pictures we are showing there of the ISIS troops.

And I'll tell you, Victor, it's been interesting to watch the business model of this group. It's business model is terror and it's making so much money from seizing oil fields, from black market oil trade getting $1 million to $3 million a day, as if the leaders of ISIS know that at some point, their fund-raisers around the world are going to be shut down, the people in the West who are funding it will be shut down and they've got to be able to be self-sustaining. And that's what they are trying to do.

And there's also the question, you made this point last this hour, I think earlier this hour, this is something, a group the president called jayvee.

BLACKWELL: The jayvee, yes.

ROMANS: Just a few months ago.

BLACKWELL: You put Lakers jerseys on them didn't make them Kobe Bryant.

There was a meeting with Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel with Arab leaders, and that was at the point when this was early on in the shift from Syria to Iraq. And they underestimated them, most critics would say.

ROMANS: The Americans did.

BLACKWELL: Yes, the Americans did. We'll hear more about that throughout the morning.

Let's talk about the investigation into the execution of James Foley now, because Scotland Yard, British intelligence officials, the FBI, they're all trying to identify the man on the right here, the black hooded ISIS executioner who killed U.S. journalist James Foley. His distinctly British accent of the beheading may have left behind more clues than he intended.

Atika Shubert is live from London with the latest on the investigation -- and not just for the purposes of intelligence and to bring justice, but they want to find this person because this video is now being used for recruitment and radicalization, Atika.

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. In fact, one terror analyst I spoke to said they specifically chose a British jihadi voice here not just to sort of maximize the threat against Westerners, but also as a major recruitment tool. These propaganda videos that come out are the main way they reach out to a lot of Muslim youth here to convince them to come join the fight to establish an Islamic Caliphate.

And so, this is one of the reasons that investigators here are desperate to find out who this man is. They have a database of video and audio recordings and, of course, they have been monitoring the hundreds of jihadists that have gone to Syria and Iraq. So, they are trying to see if that audio recording matches with anything that they might have, with anybody in the community recognizes that voice in particular.

It does like sounds like somebody from the London area, from the south of England, and somebody who linguistic experts tell us is quite well- educated, very articulate, and is likely to have grown up here in Britain from a young age -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: Do we have an understanding of exactly how many Brits are involved with this group in the Levant? There was something that sticks with me, is that British officials believe there are more Muslims involved with ISIS and supporting ISIS than are members of the British military there.

SHUBERT: Yes, this is one of the interesting things that has come out. An estimated 400 to 500 jihadists have been -- are believed to have gone to fight in Syria. But terror analysts tell me it could actually be much more, they just don't know how many exactly have gone.

And that's roughly the amount of British Muslims that are also fighting in the army here. Now, that's perhaps not too surprising in that not many British Muslims want to join the army here, especially since they have been involved in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, which are clearly, which are not supported by many in the Muslim community.

Having said that, it's a real problem when you have hundreds of young Muslims that are apparently going there. Now, the vast majority here in the Muslim community in Britain outright condemned ISIS. They abhor these propaganda videos that come out, and have outright condemned the murder of Jim Foley.

But it is a severe problem here and the government now is saying they need to double up their efforts to convince young Muslims not to go fight in Syria and Iraq.

BLACKWELL: All right. Atika Shubert there in London for us watching the hunt for the executioner -- Atika, thank you so much.

ROMANS: All right. In Gaza, the war escalating. Israel taking out new Hamas targets. What does it mean for peace talks going forward? We are live in Jerusalem, next.

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BLACKWELL: Israel is stepping up airstrikes on Hamas targets in Gaza. Three top Hamas military commanders killed in pre-dawn attacks. Israelis are calling up an additional 10,000 reservists to sign other possible escalation in hostilities as Hamas officials vow revenge.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas insists there is no alternative to Egypt's plan for a long term truce. He's heading to Cairo for a new round of peace talks this weekend.

Let's bring in Karl Penhaul live from Jerusalem.

Karl, a Hamas spokesperson, just a few days ago, warned there would be targets, the Ben Gurion Airport there in Tel Aviv. Did those threats ever come to fruition?

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, exactly. That really is important. Those threats that Hamas was making the other day. They are already having some effect. There is a heightened alert at the Ben Gurion Airport. But, certainly, no suspension of flights like we saw a month ago in July when the FAA did, in fact, suspend U.S. airlines from flying into the international airport, which caused huge embarrassment for Israel.

But there's no repeat of that, yet, although yesterday, a Hamas rocket did fall about five miles short of the airport.

Another impact of Hamas' renewed threat to Israeli society, if you like, is that the Israeli Football Association, the soccer association, has come out and suspended the start of this season's football matches. They were due to start tomorrow. But Hamas said it will try to target large public gatherings. And so, for safety reasons, that's why the soccer season has been postponed.

And Hamas is already saying that is a sure sign that Israel can't provide security to citizens. As well, of course, what we are keeping our eye on is the air war. That is what the fight in Israel and Gaza has reverted to over the last 24 hours. More than 100 rockets being fired from Gaza towards Israel. The Israeli military says in return, several dozen airstrikes going in, and 37 people in Gaza killed, we are told.

And among the dead, of course, the three Hamas commanders, those in conventional military terms would be seen as generals. But no sign, yet, what operational impact it may have on Hamas' war, Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right. Karl Penhaul there for us in Jerusalem -- Karl, thank you.

ROMANS: All right. Texas Governor Rick Perry set to be indicted today on felony ambush power charges. But he won't be near the courtroom, we'll explain why, next.

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ROMANS: A guilty plea from a college friend of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in connection with Boston marathon bombing case. Dias Kadyrbayev was accused of removing a backpack and computer from Tsarnaev's dorm room with the intent, prosecutors say, of impeding the bombing investigation. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors will ask for no more than a seven-year prison sentence. After that, the 20-year-old Kazakh national will be deported.

BLACKWELL: Texas Governor Rick Perry will be arraigned on felony abuse of power charges. But instead of being in court, Governor Perry will be 1,700 miles away, testing the waters for a 2017 presidential run. He'll be in New Hampshire for the first in the series of campaign style visits to critical nominating states. Governor Perry was fingerprinted, had his mug shot taken early this week, after his indictment.

ROMANS: A major victor for supporters of same sex marriage in Florida. A federal judge ordering the state to allow same-sex couples to marry and to recognize perform elsewhere. But he stayed most of the effects of this ruling, pending appeal, so same-sex marriages will not take place right away.

The judge ruling ban violated the due process and equal protections provisions in the U.S. Constitution.

BLACKWELL: A pair of American flags stolen from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge will be returned to the New York Police Department today. Two German artists stole them and swapped them for bleached flags last month. It's still uncertain at this point if the pair will face charges. But the artists insist the Internet was nothing more than an art project.

ROMANS: Unless you were one of the people trying to cross the Brooklyn Bridge when they were investigating this and trying to figure out what happened, and closing a lane. That is not an art project, that's just a pain.

All right. One company offering unlimited talk, text and data for life for 60 buck as month. There is a wireless price war heating up. For the first time in a long time, you are the one who is going to benefit.

BLACKWELL: We win!

ROMANS: We're going to have an EARLY START on your money, next.

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ROMANS: Forty-eight minutes past the hour. Time for a Friday EARLY START on your money.

U.S. stock futures pointing higher. Look at that. That could mean another record day. Stocks had a bumpy start to the month of August, right? But the bull market back and climbing. The S&P 500 record close yesterday, the 28th record high this year.

Look at this chart, the S&P 500 up almost 200 percent since the March 2000 low.

OK. What does that mean? That means if you invested $1,000 in stocks back in March, 2009, it would be worth almost $3,000 today.

Bank of America's $16.5 billion settlement with the government may not be as bad as it sounds. Some of that record settlement could be claimed as tax deductions for the company. That will produce roughly $4 billion in tax benefits for B of A. The Justice Department can specify that certain settlements are not deductible. But that was not part of B of A's deal.

The bank admitted responsibility for misleading buyers of toxic mortgage-backed securities leading up to the financial crisis. That's the largest single settlement ever between a company and the United States government.

The latest news in the wireless price wars, Sprint undercutting the competition. Sprint announced a new unlimited data plan that is $60 a month. Unlimited data. Rival T-Mobile offers an unlimited plan for $60 a month. At Verizon and AT&T don't offer unlimited at all. The cheaper plan is Sprint's latest effort to become more competitive after its merger with T-Mobile fell through. The carrier is losing customers, has been ranked the worst cell phone service in the country. $60 a month.

BLACKWELL: Yes, I would need mine for e-mails, not texts so much. I'm on everybody's e-mail list with 40 ads a morning. I need to get off those.

(LAUGHTER)

ROMANS: Do you read them all?

BLACKWELL: No, I just delete them. That's the first 60 seconds of my day.

Hey, for our viewers around the world, "CNN NEWSROOM" is next. For those of you here in the U.S., EARLY START continues right now.