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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Power Shifts in Saudi Arabia and Yemen; ISIS Teen Awaits Sentencing; Desert Snow Teaches Cops to Seize Cash

Aired January 23, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

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ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

We are following two very different and very sudden transfers of power in a part of the world where power doesn't transfer very easily. Saudi Arabia has a new king coming and with the not so unexpected death of the 90-year-old King Abdullah, the former crowned prince, Salman, age 79, moves up into the top spot. And if you're thinking, so what, you should know the consequences for Middle East stability, the war on terror and, of course, oil, always oil, certainly does have an effect on everyone's life.

In neighboring Yemen to the south, a Shiite militia that lay siege to the presidential palace barely three days ago and then forced a tentative peace deal only yesterday, as long as the cabinet stepped down and the president and the prime minister, well all of that effectively now is the way it's going to be. The other folks are in charge today. And since we opened this program 24 hours ago, Yemen's U.S.-backed president, the prime minister and cabinet no longer with any say. And al Qaeda's most dangerous faction may just be lying in wait.

Certainly can't forget about that other group, ISIS, and that group's threat to behead more hostages if Japan doesn't had over $200 million. The deadline apparently has passed. And what's frightening is, there's still no word on the fate of those hostages. Context is certainly everything and the connections here can be very, very complicated. So I turn to my colleague Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, Richard Quest in Davos, Switzerland, and joining me here in New York, CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank.

Barbara, if I can begin with you. The embassy is a big story. Just days ago we were reporting the numbers there in the hundreds and now we're hearing it's more like the dozens and that the drawdown of personnel in Yemen has effectively begun. But what is the strategy, and do they have those roots for safety mapped out for these Americans?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, the State Department, late yesterday, said it was going to start reducing the numbers at the embassy. They are not saying how many have left and how many more may leave obviously due to security concerns. And, indeed, just as you hinted at, Ashleigh, they did drive the route before they went to the -- took the civilians to the airport. Security officials drove the route to make sure they could get there safely.

This is all about reducing the numbers at the embassy in case you really did have to have a full-blown evacuation. You don't want anybody there that you don't really need there. You want to get it down, you want to get the security profile down and make it as simple as possible. Why keep Americans there if they don't really need to be there. Because, of course, the embassy perhaps not really working at full speed. There isn't a government of Yemen to really conduct diplomacy with at this point. That's really the biggest issue.

Who is in charge with the government essentially having resigned? The Houthis still seeking to take full power. At least out on the street, uncertainty about what will happen next. The notion of U.S. diplomacy, perhaps, by that embassy, practically speaking, very limited at the moment.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: And, Barbara, just quickly if you could, also remind our viewers what happened a few days ago with one of the American vehicles just outside of that embassy. It took on dozens of rounds of fire. Now, thank God it was an armored vehicle, but do they have that kind of protection in the event that they do need to get all of those Americans out? Can they get them out safely with armored vehicles and then in the air and out of that country?

STARR: At the moment the assessment is that the roads are safe enough to drive on. I think you would find most embassies, most U.S. embassies around the world, today have their personnel in protective- type vehicles. That is the state of things in so many places. Yemen, in particular, because of the unrest on the streets.

The question becomes very interesting. It is the Yemeni military and security services who are responsible out on the street there, outside the fence line for protecting the embassy, protecting personnel as they come and go through those checkpoints. So it will be very closely watched over the coming hours and days. Are those military and security personnel still there, out there, manning their checkpoints? Are they still loyal? Big question. No real answer right now.

BANFIELD: All right, Barbara, standing by, if you will for a moment.

Paul Cruickshank, if you could weigh in on this issue with the Americans losing President Hadi, who effectively was quite a good ally, specifically with the kinds of programs the Americans need so desperately, counterterrorism program, the drone program, and just general observation in the area that is increasingly unstable. Do we have any indication that the Houthis or whomever is going to fill this vacuum is going to be as friendly?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, not as friendly as the United States, but the Houthis are viscerally opposed to al Qaeda. I mean these are Shia rebels from the north and they've been taking the fight to al Qaeda in a big way in recent months in the center of Yemen, in Albida (ph) province, in Maret (ph) province. And that fight has escalated over the past few days between the Houthis on one side and al Qaeda on the other. The worry --

BANFIELD: Could they be our new ally?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, I mean, it's a very big, open question because the Houthis are also anti-Americans to some degree. So they're both anti -

BANFIELD: Their slogan, "death to America."

CRUICKSHANK: They're both anti-American and anti-al Qaeda. It's going to be much more difficult for the United States to cooperate with the Houthi. But the big worry in Yemen is that al Qaeda will get a recruitment windfall if the Houthis take charge of the government because it will be a Shiite government essentially and the Sunni tribals are absolutely viscerally opposed to the Shia. So you could see a lot more of them go over to the al Qaeda side and you can see al Qaeda expand in a big way in Yemen. That's very worrying given the fact that they've said repeatedly their number one priority is hitting the United States.

BANFIELD: All right, so Richard Quest in Davos, if you could weigh in on the global map here and how this affects the Americans with the king of Saudi Arabia now dead and his brother taking over the crown. What do we know of him? How much of an ally might he be to the United States and will the Saudis remain the allies they have been for decades?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, let me give you the words of John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, who I've just broken to very briefly here in Davos. Secretary of State Kerry said -- I asked him, does he see any change, any difference in U.S./Saudi relations as a result of King Abdullah's death. He said, no, no, no, I do not see any change in relations, not from the discussions and conversations that he's been having.

And that's for a very good reason. The new administration, if you like, the new king, Salman, he has effectively been running much of Saudi Arabia in recent months and years as King Abdullah failed in his health. There will be no doubt certain changes -- we've seen them already, the head of security, the chief of staff, there will be internal changes and internal jockeying for power within Saudi Arabia. But as for its fundamental alliance with the United States, no, that seems to be absolutely rock solid. I'm not hearing anybody suggesting on security issues that changes.

BANFIELD: And if you could just touch on the oil story. Americans have a keen interest in the Middle East for security issues and then for that pocketbook problem. There was a spike in the price of oil. Everyone wants to know, is this temporary or is this a sign of things to come with the king's passing?

QUEST: Well, the spike is just clear knee-jerk reaction. What happens next? But the new king, last night, very clearly, very efficiently made it clear there would be no change in Saudi's policy as relates to OPEC. You'll remember, Ashleigh, that policy says, we ain't cutting, we'll let the price fall, we're keeping our market share. So we can expect, unless, you know, there's a certain change or a vacuum of power, which is not being spoken of at the moment, that the policy remains, the tap remains open, the price remains low. You're seeing a temporary spike. Longer term, it probably drifts back or stays where it is.

BANFIELD: All right. Richard Quest for us in Davos, Switzerland. Thank you. Barbara Starr at the Pentagon and Paul Cruickshank in New York City, thank you to all three of you.

In other news, how much trouble can an American teenager get into for aiding and supporting ISIS, especially when this is the teenager you're talking about. She's a she. We're about to find out what it is she did and what exactly is going to happen to her because of it. And, by the way, the Mideast wedding she had planned? Well, it's off effective today.

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BANFIELD: A Colorado teenager is going to be sentenced a little later on today, in fact, this afternoon, for providing material support to ISIS. This is Shannon Conley. Shannon Maureen Conley. She's 19 years old right now but she was arrested last year at the Denver International Airport. She was on a little trip with a plan to marry a suspected ISIS member. Conley has converted to Islam and she prefers the name Amatullah. She made a deal, a plea deal, with the prosecutors and she pled guilty and now she's facing a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for her infractions. CNN's Ana Cabrera is in Denver. She's following this case closely.

First thing I thought of when I heard five years is that sounds very low for someone, an American, who is pleading guilty to materiel support, to terrorism and to ISIS. Can you sort of run down the factors that lead into where she may end up on this spectrum of up to five years?

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ultimately it's the judge's decision today to determine her sentence, but as part of the plea hearing, as part of her plea agreement, she's agreed to fully cooperate with investigators as they go after her so-called conspirators who recruited her essentially online. And she's even agreed to testify against them before a grand jury should the time come to that. We know she's identified her so-called suitor by the name of Yusir Mohi (ph), a 32-year-old Tunisian man, she believed. And she actually had his contact information on her when she was arrested back in April trying to board a plane to Syria.

She's also told investigators that she was in contact or in communication online with a so-called ISIS sister, a woman who was a housewife alongside an ISIS fighter in Syria. And Shannon Conley says she had plans to join them in Syria, that she wanted to be married to an ISIS fighter and become a nurse in an ISIS camp since she had her nursing certification. But she also told them that she was prepared to fight and willing to do so if necessary. In fact, she had obtained some military tactics and firearms training through the U.S. Army Explorers prior to this planned trip. And when they arrested her, they found shooting targets inside her home that had distance on them, that had the number of rounds fired. They also found information, books and lectures by Anwar al Awlaki, of course, one of the previous leaders of al Qaeda in Yemen. And so they say that's some of the evidence that they mounted against her.

Now, her lawyers and her parents claim she was a victim, that she was impressionable, just 19 years old, and she had gone online to learn more about Islam since she was a recent convert and that's where she got trapped in this web of an Internet savvy jihadist organization. Listen to what her lawyers said to us right after her plea hearing back in September. And, note, he calls her Halima (ph), which was her preferred Muslim name at the time.

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ROBERT PEPIN, CONLEY'S ATTORNEY: Since her arrest in April, the news out of the part of the world to which she was headed has been just awful. The man she was on her way to marry was part of ISIS. Like all of us, Halima has been horrified to learn of the slaughter and oppression at the hands of the people controlling ISIS. It was never her vision to have any role in any of that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Now, I went to go visit Shannon Conley in prison yesterday prior to this sentencing hearing and when she sat down with me she said, I can't say anything. My lawyers advised me not to talk. But I did ask her, do you prefer to be called Shannon or Halima now, and she said actually I go by a different name. I go by Amatullah, which she said means "female servant of Allah." So she is still practicing Islam. But I asked her, why did she change her name. And she said because I'm a different person than when I came in.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Well, she's going to be a real different person when she comes out after whatever she ends up being sentenced to today.

Just quickly, Ana, can you tell me this. Naming co-conspirators, fingering those who are involved in all of this, naming people overseas is one thing, but did she name anyone else here in America? Are they after anyone else here at home that might have actually helped her?

CABRERA: Not that we know of. We've read through all of the documents that have been released by the court, the criminal complaint, the plea hearing agreement, and within those documents we learn that she told her parents that everything she learned about Islam she had got online through her own Internet research. And so her parents are really stressing that point, that they're concerned about other young people going online and, if they're impressionable, they may fall trap or fall victim to the same thing Shannon did. And so they're urging the mainstream Muslim leaders to come out and counter these radical ideologies that are so prevalent on the Internet, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Well, hey, there's a great idea. Ana Cabrera, thank you for that. We're looking forward to finding out what the final sentence is this afternoon. Up next, $40,000 seized by police in a traffic stop. And the driver

didn't do anything wrong. So you would think that officer, that you're looking at, who's doing it is going to get in big trouble, right? Not even close. He was just doing his job. And guess what? They can do it anywhere they want around the country. You'll find out why, next.

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BANFIELD: There are police officers nationwide, maybe even in your own town, who are being trained in roadside tactics. And some say one particular method they're getting is flat out stealing. We first brought you the story yesterday about a company that's called Desert Snow. It basically teaches police officers how to seize cash. The surprising thing is, you don't even have to be charged with a crime in order for them to just clean out your trunk, take the bag, take the money, and run. Just the mere thought or the suspicion of bad behavior on the part of the cop seems to be reason enough for the police to just take all that cash away from you. And this can happen pretty much anywhere in the country. In part two of a CNN investigation, our Gary Tuchman looks at what has been happening to drivers in at least one small Nevada county.

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GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You're looking at a desolate stretch of interstate highway in rural Nevada, about two hours east of Reno. If you were driving here on I-80 with cash in your car last year, this could have happened to you.

SHERIFF'S DEPUTY LEE DUB (ph), HUMBOLDT COUNTY: How much money you got? That's not yours, is it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's (ph) mine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm seizing it.

TUCHMAN: This is Humboldt County Sheriff's Deputy Lee Dub. He's about to seize roughly $40,000 from this driver who wasn't charged with a crime or even a traffic violation. Attorney John Ohlson represents the driver and is in the process of organizing a class action suit on the behalf of others who believe this is nothing more than thievery.

JOHN OHLSON, DRIVER'S ATTORNEY: They give them a receipt. It doesn't say how much he took. They tell him if he wants to protest it, that they'll take his car too. He won't do any official act after that except to put the money in the bank. No police reports. No lawsuit. No forfeiture lawsuit, which is generally what's done. Take the money and run.

TUCHMAN: The traffic stops are call interdictions by the authorities, part of something called civil asset forfeiture in which cops are permitted to seize money if law enforcement believes the money may be part of a criminal enterprise.

OHLSON: What's going on here is they take the money, they go back to town and they put it in the bank. TUCHMAN: Deputy Dub was so proud of the stops he made that he began autographing photos of himself with his canine dog and huge bundles of the confiscated cash. And on the highway he berated motorists.

DUB: You cannot be driving it. I'm convinced that's dope money. Now, you may get away with the - you may get away with it with the cashier's checks and stuff, but you ain't getting the cash. That's going to be seized, OK? You're up to no good.

TUCHMAN: This kind of language is very disturbing to Mike Allen, who happens to be Deputy Dub's new boss, just elected as the new sheriff, after campaigning with the promise to end this type of activity.

SHERIFF MIKE ALLEN, HUMBOLDT COUNTY, NEVADA: When I first learned about it, I guess I was in denial, thinking that this can't happen. That something is being misled and that all the information isn't coming forth.

TUCHMAN (on camera): And today how do you feel about it?

ALLEN: Well, after I viewed a videotape, I feel that this - these highway interdiction programs needs to be looked into, and to insure that nothing -- people's rights are not being violated.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Records show that Deputy Lee Dub was trained by Desert Snow, an Oklahoma company responsible for training thousands of police nationwide in roadside tactics ranging from catching terrorists to seizing cash from motorists. So we wanted to ask Deputy Dub about this. Ask him why he thinks this is in any way appropriate. It was nightfall when we walked up to a fence outside his house.

TUCHMAN (on camera): Deputy Dub, this is Gary Tuchman from CNN. We had a question for you.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): No answer. But as our CNN team was driving away, this happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll wait for you. Thank you.

TUCHMAN: We were pulled over by some of Dub's sheriff's department colleagues. Why? Because the other deputies told us Dub had called them after our visit. We'd done nothing wrong, but one of the deputies told us, quote, "he's been having a tough time." A few minutes later, we were let go.

OHLSON: I've been in totalitarian societies. I was in Bulgaria before the fall of the wall and of the iron curtain, and it's real spooky. And I think this is one aspect that you'd be worried about. But even more than that, I think that the average traveler, traveling on an interstate highway in this country would never imagine this kind of thing could happen to them.

TUCHMAN: Attorney Ohlson and the new sheriff both say the Nevada attorney general's office is investigating the situation. The attorney adding he has been informed that Deputy Dub and one or more of his colleagues are being investigated for at least 38 similar forfeiture stops. The new sheriff says the stops have now been suspended. But is Deputy Dub still with the department? The answer is yes. But Sheriff Allen would not say if he's been taken off active duty during this investigation. He did say Deputy Dub is still being paid. And what about the $40,000 seized from this driver? It has been returned as part of an out-of-court settlement.

Gary Tuchman, CNN, Humboldt County, Nevada.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: And part three of Gary Tuchman's investigation is going to air tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on "Anderson Cooper 360." I highly advise you take a look at that.

So, And take a look at this, while you're at it. This is what we woke up to here in New York. That's one of the most powerful men in politics in this state in cuffs, in the back of a cruiser, arrested. Alleged bribes, political kickbacks, corruption. Big surprise, right? Well, you might be surprised to find out how many places across the country this can happen, because when politicians are allowed to keep their jobs and graft (ph) tunnels can stay open, this can happen anywhere. Find out who's happening to this guy and just how high the problem goes.

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