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What Really Happened In Osama Bin Laden Killing?; First Lady Gets Candid At Commencement. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired May 11, 2015 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00] SEYMOUR HERSH, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Pakistani army, the military, is a very proud institution. It was a big blow to their - to their whole image in the country. It was a very unhappy time for the Pakistanis.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, but it - it would have to be. But one of two things has to be true. Either they found him, as you suggest, and they took him and they were holding him for leverage and they didn't want anybody to know because they're so afraid because everybody loves bin Laden, or they would have immediately turned him over to the United States to show they actually were a good friend and I had interviewed Pervez Musharraf, the former president there, more than once about this, and there was no question a problem for them about what to do with bin Laden if they got him. But they can't have - they can't have it both ways that, you know, oh, well, we would turn him over if we got him, but we got him and we didn't turn him over because we were holding him as leverage. But then when we do decide for you to have him, you're going to stage it as a raid and make us look like we're idiots and we're on the wrong side of this war. Where - how does Pakistan win in this?

HERSH: Musharraf - Musharraf was out of office at this time and of course you're not going to share it. You're going to keep this a pretty tight secret. Look -

CUOMO: They looked bad in this is what I'm saying, Seymour. They didn't come out looking good.

HERSH: They look bad now. No, they look bad - they look bad now. But either -

CUOMO: But even the way they planned it would have looked bad for them if the - if the - if the SEALs went in there.

HERSH: But what choice did they have? What choice did they have when somebody on the inside walks into the American embassy, and that's the only way I can describe it. Of course everybody in Pakistan knows who he is and, of course, even I do know who he is and where he is. But we're not talking about that. What if somebody walks in and says, here's - he's the story. What can they do? They're stuck. And the best thing they could do is, once we - we let them know that we knew that they had had him there - they had him there for at least since '06. They picked him up in - somewhere in the mountainside, wherever he was hiding. I think somewhere actually inside the Pakistan borders in Waziristan, and the Pakistani intelligence service picked him up. They put him in the compound. He'd been there for four years. He was a prisoner there. What could they do? They were stuck either way. They had to go along with us. And the way - the best way you could do it would be to have the SEALs come in. And if you remember, the SEALs came in with no air cover, no, you know, if there was a big firefight --

CUOMO: But the administration released information that they knew where there were holes in the radar and that these ships that were used could get through without the radar picking them up and that's why they did the mission the way they did and practiced it for so long in Nevada, as opposed to Utah, where you suggest in the reporting. Why doesn't that all smell right?

HERSH: Umm, umm, if I'm wrong about Utah, I mean that's just a mistake because I know exactly where they were in Nevada. But sometimes my geography gets lousy. But in any case, the bottom line was, that once - once you - I - you know, I can sit there and argue with you all week and all day about it. The story is a long story. There's a lot of information in it. It's not just - it is one source, one person who's quoted, but I make it very clear that others were involved. And I'll - I'll take it a step further, he wasn't - you know, the information I have suggested that the whole notion of being buried at sea is probably not correct.

The story was, it would have been a good, clean mission if we hadn't gone public that night and said, we did it. Instead of waiting the week, as we were supposed to. That was the game. If you think about it that way, you realize it makes a lot more sense. The Pakistanis were confronted with the fact we knew something they didn't want us to know. They had no choice but to cooperate because we have a lot of economic leverage on them, the generals. I mean we put a lot of money into Pakistan. Not all of it -

CUOMO: Right. I'm just saying that, you know, you've made a big wager here with a pedigree that extends many years.

HERSH: No, no, it's no wager. Excuse me, excuse me, no, that's your definition. This is not a wager. This is a story that has to be dealt with by this government very seriously.

CUOMO: Understood, and -

HERSH: And it has to be dealt with others. They -

CUOMO: And we'll see how they deal with it going forward. And again, just for the audience's benefit, this is something Peter Bergen has also looked into very closely and he says what's true is not new and what is new is not true. But, Mr. Hersh, thank you very much for coming on to defend the reporting, appreciate it here on NEW DAY.

HERSH: Bye-bye.

CUOMO: And, obviously, we're telling the story for your benefit. So what do you think about what you heard from Mr. Hersh? You can read the piece, obviously. It's 10,000 words long. Tweet us with the #newdaycnn or post your comment on facebook.com/newday. Mic.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Alright, Chris.

Six Republicans have declared White House runs. Several of them were in South Carolina over the weekend. How did they pitch their vision to conservative activists? We explore that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:38:12] PEREIRA: All right, here we go with the five things to know for your new day.

At number one, 10 people still missing after a reported tornado in Van, Texas. This capped off a series of more than 70 twisters over the weekend stretching from South Carolina to Texas.

Four suspects are now charged in the weekend killing of two Hattiesburg, Mississippi, police officers during a traffic stop. Two face capital murder charges, making them eligible for the death penalty.

Saudi Arabia's new king snubbing President Obama. The two were scheduled to meet one on one at a D.C. summit with Arab leaders. That changed abruptly in a move perceived to be pushback over Washington's Iran policy.

The defense could rest as soon as today in the penalty phase against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Attorneys are discussing whether prominent death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean will testify.

The Orioles back at Camden Yards tonight, their first game at home since they played the White Sox in an empty stadium just days after the riots following Freddie Gray's death.

And for more on the five things to know, be sure to visit newdaycnn.com for the latest.

Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Michaela.

Well, you just heard from Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter behind that new report suggesting the president lied about Osama bin Laden's death. Our pundits give us their take, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:43:23] CAMEROTA: Alright, well, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh was on NEW DAY minutes ago. He was defending a new report suggesting that the White House lied about the manhunt that killed Osama bin Laden. Does Hersh's report pass the smell test?

CUOMO: The White House lied, Pakistan lied, the SEALs lied, the Saudis lied, everybody's lying. Let's have some people on here to tell the truth. CNN political commentator and host of "The Ben Ferguson Show," Ben Ferguson, and CNN political commentator and host of Huff Post Live, Marc Lamont Hill.

BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

CUOMO: I mean that's my main takeaway having just interviewed him, is that for this to be true, what Hersh has in his reporting, and again his pedigree is long, everybody's lying, Ben, not just some people.

FERGUSON: Well, I highly doubt the SEALs are lying to the point. I mean they - they have a pretty big code of integrity when it comes to raids and what's happened and look at all the heat that even those that have mentioned anything about the raid have taken from other SEAL members.

I can't imagine that they would allow this lie to be taken this far and to be a part of it. And also, like you said, you have multiple governments that would have had to lie for this to happen. I'm not buying it at all. I mean I'm not saying that they weren't maybe protecting him or some people in Pakistan knew where he was or in an area where he was. I think it's very, very realistic. But overall, no.

CAMEROTA: And, Marc, I mean one of the things - two of the big claims that Seymour Hersh is saying is that Pakistan knew all along where he was and that there was no firefight when the Navy SEALs rushed in. They didn't encounter -

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's a tough claim. The second thing was particularly tough, to say that there was absolutely no firefight, because as Chris said, it means a bunch of people are lying. But not just a bunch of people, but a bunch of people who historically and by practice don't cover for each other. So it's not - so it doesn't make sense to me. The idea that Pakistan could have in some way had access to information or intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts -

[08:45:06] CUOMO: It was weird where he was. That we thought he was in the Hindu Kush mountains -

FERGUSON: Sure, he was at a resort.

HILL: Yes. Yes.

CUOMO: And he was right down the street from the equivalent of their west point. That's always been a point of intrigue.

HILL: That is curious, and it would be bad for business in terms of stability in the region and political strength for Pakistan to have known where he was and not revealed it, or to have been babysitting him for an extended period of time. So there is some plausibility to this argument that Pakistan would be lying at some point, but the idea everyone is lying.

FERGUSON: The other thing is, not having a firefight, you're telling me that people that pledge allegiance to do things like 9/11, to blow up buildings, to blow up ships, to blow all these things up that al Qaeda has done as terrorists, all of a sudden America comes in and you're just going to lay down your arms and say we don't want to fight?

CUOMO: And also, Peter Bergen went there.

FERGUSON: Especially if you're willing to live in a hole with Osama bin Laden. I mean, think about how isolated, that's a role in al Qaeda that's much more isolated than any other role. You have got to be so quiet, you have to cut off virtually all of your family contacts. You're not living even close to a normal life and they come in, you go, hey, don't shoot me?

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: And Peter Bergen went to the compound before they destroyed it in Abbottabad and he said it was riddled with bullets, so somebody would have had to have done that as some part of the coverup.

But then on the other side, why would Hersh go with a story that has this many holes if he didn't feel confident in the people he was talking to?

HILL: I think he believes it. I don't think this is salacious sensational journalism here. I think he could be wrong, but sincerely wrong. First of all, he relied on one senior official as the primary contact.

CUOMO: He says he talked to other people and he did a lot of vetting, but he does get a lot from this one anonymous source.

HILL: But these other people haven't said publicly, at least, that this story is true. Saying something is plausible is very different than saying something affirmatively happened and that's what we haven't seen so far.

FERGUSON: I would say anything's plausible when you have a guy this close to their West Point. There is a very good chance you might have one or two people that knew where he was and they didn't give him up.

CAMEROTA: Okay.

FERGUSON: For whatever reason, but to say they were protecting him? I don't know if I would buy that.

CAMEROTA: But if there is something in Seymour Hersh's investigative reporting, if there is a germ of truth somewhere and if it turns out that the administration somehow fudged or fabricated what happened that night, then what did that mean for the administration?

FERGUSON: It means everything else -

HILL: I don't think it means anything.

(CROSSTALK)

FERGUSON: I disagree. I think if they lied and there's something that you can prove, that they did not tell the American people or the world the actual story that happened, then everything else in his article now becomes plausible to people. Well, they lied to us about this and lied about this, they misled us on this, so now maybe I do believe more of this.

HILL: I took what you're saying to mean if we verify that much of this is not provable but this one thing is, that they overstated the role of the U.S. military, they overstate their own intelligence, or they dismissed the role of the ISI in terms of what it knew and how it intervened. I think that is problematic, but I think we may overestimate how much the American people and the global community care how Osama bin Laden got killed.

(CROSSTALK)

I think at the end of the day, people are like, Obama was able to do something effectively and no one else did. I'm not saying that's appropriate, but that's typically how people see it.

FERGUSON: I cannot imagine Osama bin Laden being taken and thinking that somehow he was going to end up in American hands without laying down a fight or the people in front of him. That's the part to me that I cannot see in any circumstance where he's going to say, okay, here's my weapon, let's go to trial, hand me over to another country? There's no way that wasn't a blaze of glory going down.

HILL: What would be the logic, what would be the motivation for the president to say that we had absolutely no outside help, that this was a purely U.S. mission?

FERGUSON: Pakistan didn't want to have blood on their hands because of possible people, they would anger their own society, say, hey, this is all America, I don't want any part of this.

HILL: Then it becomes a conspiracy between the United States and Pakistan, that Pakistan actually didn't want to have blood on his hands.

CUOMO: Pakistan put out really hard statements after this saying this was a complete rejection of their sovereignty, and Hersh's theory is they had a plan where everybody was going to acknowledge it and went wrong because the president decided to --

HILL: This sounds like an episode of "House of Cards" more than it does an actual political -- I don't buy it. I don't buy it.

CAMEROTA: Ben, Marc, thank you. Great to see you guys.

Let's get over to Michaela.

PEREIRA: Well, it's graduation season, lots of commencements happening. First Lady Michelle Obama speaking candidly about race during a commencement speech in Alabama. Her passionate speech and message to the students next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:51:31] PEREIRA: First Lady Michelle Obama getting candid about the 2008 presidential campaign in a commencement address at Tuskegee University in Alabama. The First Lady told the graduates she was treated differently than other candidates' spouses because of her race. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA: As potentially the first African-American first lady, I was also the focus of another set of questions and speculations, conversations sometimes rooted in the fears and misperceptions of others. Was I too loud or too angry or too emasculating? Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: I want to bring in cultural critic and writer Michaela Angela Davis. I was just thinking, you know, when you're the first, you know you're going to be up against it.

What was your overall thought about how she opened up so personally and about her remarks?

MICHAELA ANGELA DAVIS, CULTURAL CRITIC WRITER: You know, I just thought she was really honest. When you look out into a crowd and you see a sea of black scholars, immediately your heart opens and you get, you know, if not 100 percent, she was 90 percent. And I loved how she met them where they were, and had them feel like she had challenges, too. Right? So I felt like this was her speech on race.

PEREIRA: Want to play another little bit from that. Talking about those early days in office. Let's take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Back in those days, I had a lot of sleepless nights worrying about what people thought of me. Wondering if I might be hurting my husband's chances of winning his election. Fearing how my girls would feel if they found out what some people were saying about their mom.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: That is real.

DAVIS: Real talk.

PEREIRA: I'm curious, do you think she would have made those comments, could she have said those comments four or five years ago?

DAVIS: I think that's interesting. I think both the president and the first lady are getting more open. They have nothing left to win. You know. But I think that she spoke to the complexities of the negotiations that black women have to do in any given space. Right? She's certainly rarefied and privileged but even she has to negotiate gender, race, socioeconomics, expectations, people's assumptions.

And I think that was so powerful, what she said to them. She said, you know, people are not going to see you in these caps and gowns. You have to understand their expectations and their assumptions around you are below your education. And I felt that was really powerful.

CAMEROTA: So do you agree with her assessment that different language was used for her --

DAVIS: Oh, certainly.

CAMEROTA: -- because she was the first black person?

DAVIS: Certainly. You know, I think she disrupted what we are used to in terms of framing first lady, right? No one expected her. I think the general imagination was Clair Huxtable was the closest thing we've ever seen to a black professional mother with agency. Right? So I think that people were triggered to use language publicly that they probably have never -- they didn't even know that that was in there, that she becomes, you know, the fist bump, you know, the terrorist -- her first major cover of "New Yorker," you know, she spoke about that and how, also that it was painful that -- they're not just brushing things off their shoulders. And you have to manage and negotiate constantly and I think --

CUOMO: Did she invite a little bit of the scrutiny by being provocative? We all mention the quote early on when she said, "Finally, I'm proud of my country"?

DAVIS: You know, I don't know whether it was her being provocative, but her being unfiltered. That she was just speaking as she would if Michelle Obama, the woman, and then she's Michelle Obama, the wife of the presidential candidate. And I think everyone creates more filters once they're in that space. So she said that very early on. But I do think --

[08:55:18] CUOMO: It stuck, though.

DAVIS: It sure did. But everything stuck. Her arms stuck. Like everything --

PEREIRA: Her bangs stuck.

DAVIS: Right. But I do think -- and I think that she spoke to -- you have to be very careful. We know, publicly speaking, there are times you say things that your intention was different but people see it in a different way. I think that was one of those instances.

PEREIRA: And that makes a point. People watch what she says. Do you think there is going to be some sentiment this week? Because she knows that this was a speech that was being watched by more than just the parents and the faculty. Do you think there are going to be people that are going to say she could have done more, we're at a critical time in our nation right now, she could have used that speech to say more?

DAVIS: Well, I mean, how much more, right? Because she talked about Ferguson, she talked about Baltimore, she talked about having to manage she and her husband being in formal situations, and being mistaken for the help. Right? She talked about history, about Ralph Ellison being there, about Tuskegee airmen. She got so much in there and also managed to make people laugh and see her humanity. You get history, current events, humanity --

PEREIRA: That's a lot in one speech.

DAVIS: -- race, gender, like what do you -- and I think that's also part of how much can you be too black or too --

CUOMO: Well, he's always been a box. I think one of the big misconceptions we had about President Obama's time is that he would be able to deal with race. It seems like it's going to be harder - it's been harder for him than maybe it would have been.

DAVIS: And she's the intersection of race and gender.

PEREIRA: She is. That's a very good point.

DAVIS: We're at a time when race and gender are really what it is. So for her, she really speaks to all of it.

PEREIRA: Thought provoking to be sure. Michaela Angela Davis, always good to have another Michaela on the set. Appreciate that.

CUOMO: Twice as nice. A lot of news this morning. Let's get you right to "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello right after a short break. Have a great day.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)