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New Day

Student Accused of Killing Texas Tech Police Officer; Killer Shot Guard Minutes Before Firing at Concern Crowd; Trump's Escalating Feud with Senator Bob Corker. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired October 10, 2017 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:32:53] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right. We're following breaking news.

A freshman student is now in custody after allegedly shooting and killing a Texas Tech University police officer. The shooting taking place last night. Officers brought 19-year-old Hollis Daniels to the campus police station after allegedly finding evidence of drugs in his room. Police say Daniels pulled out a gun and shot the officer in the head, then fled on foot. The officer's name has not been released.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We have an update on the Las Vegas massacre. Police now say the killer shot a hotel security guard six minutes before he began firing hundreds of rounds on the crowd at that outdoor concert. Investigators originally said the security guard approached the gunman's room as the shooting was under way, diverting his attention. Authorities say they've spoken to the killer's brother and other family members. But the killer's motive remains a mystery.

CUOMO: Less than a month after expressing regret for calling President Trump a, quote, white supremacist on Twitter, ESPN has been suspended host Jemele Hill. It's a two-week suspension, but they say it's because of another series of tweets, what they call a second violation. Hill tweeting NFL placed a, and quote, unfair burden on players when owners said they would bench players if they took a knee during the national anthem. She also tweeted, team winners will listen if advertisers pull out, though Hill says she was not advocating a boycott.

Meantime, Hillary Clinton wading into the NFL anthem controversy again during a speech at UC-Davis. She said she stands by the players' protest.

Here's a little sample.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Let's be clear. Those players aren't protesting the national anthem or the flag. They're protesting racism and injustice. And they have every right to do so.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CUOMO: Clinton telling the crowd that social media accounts with likely ties to Russia were used to inflame passions on both sides of the NFL protest debate.

CAMEROTA: All right. We have more now on the shift in that timeline of the Las Vegas massacre. Authorities now say the killer fired at a security guard before he began shooting concertgoers.

[06:35:04] What does that tell investigators about what happened? So, we'll ask our experts next.

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CAMEROTA: So, there's a major change in the timeline of the Las Vegas massacre. Police now say the killer shot a hotel security guard six minutes before he began shooting at concertgoers from his window. Not after as they originally thought.

So, let's discuss with CNN law enforcement analyst James Gagliano and CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd.

Great to have both of you.

So, this is an interesting development. OK, James, let me pull up for everybody the timeline as we now know it, as the authorities have now released. This is interesting.

At 9:59 p.m. on that fateful night, that's when the security guard, Jesus Campos, was first shot.

[06:40:02] OK, 9:59. At 10:05 then, the first shots are fired on the crowd by the gunman.

Then at 10:12, OK? So, 13 minutes later, officers on the 31st floor hear the gunfire above them, they're still trying to locate where the guy is, right? The last shots fired by the gunman, 10:15. The first breach is at 11:20.

How does this timeline change the investigation, in your mind?

JAMES GAGLIANO, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: It doesn't necessarily change it, Alisyn. I mean, obviously, there's been a lot made about the fact that there was an interchanged -- the security guard's appearance and when the gunfire started. So, we know those things have been interchangeable.

My view of it is this: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the fog of war, all the chaos that was going on, some of the erroneous reports. There were reports on social media. There were phone-ins saying there was another gunman on the fourth floor, there's people over here, there's people over there. I give them the benefit of the doubt. That is the fog of war, the volatility, uncertainty in those kind of situations.

What I would love to see them tighten up from my perspective is the messaging, the information they're giving out. And initially, there were a lot of press conferences that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department gave. And in some of them, it was kind of like a full rift, you know, talking about, well, how could there not be a second shooter, then yesterday, or people that helped him out.

CAMEROTA: You think they're disclosing too much or they're theorizing. They shouldn't be theorizing in public.

GAGLIANO: I would like to see more discipline from that perspective, from the PR perspective. The public has a right to know. And, obviously, the police department has a relationship with the media because it helps them to put leads out, to get more leads.

CAMEROTA: Yes, and, by the way, there's not going to be a court case. So -- I mean, the guy's dead. So, they should be forthcoming about information.

GAGLIANO: There's not going to be a court case, but you don't want to fuel speculation of erroneous reports. And that's what's going on. They've got to tighten up those press conferences.

CAMEROTA: So, Phil, listened, an active shooter of this lethal variety is one of the worst things any police department could ever have to deal with it. I don't mean to second guess them. But the idea that the security guard was shot six minutes before the other shots, doesn't that mean that the police knew what room the shooter was in earlier?

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: That's not clear to me. Look, we had an initial story, as James was talking about. It came up pretty early. We have a second story.

I'm sitting here watching, asking a couple of questions before I pass judgment, as someone on the inside and had people second-guess me six ways until Sunday. The first, are we sure this story is correct? The second is, let's be clear, we're on a different timeline outside than the guys and the men and women are on the inside.

We're sitting here focused on 360 seconds, six minutes eight, nine days ago of whether there was an error in the first conversation with the Vegas police about who shot whom first. The people on the inside are sitting there saying, the investigation includes hundreds of interviews, thousands of hours of review of tape within, for example, that casino and other casinos. Reviews of digital media, including phone, text, e-mail, et cetera, not only with the subject but with friends and family.

And meanwhile, the media says why didn't you get the six minutes right and have you done the after action on an event? Whereas as you said, there won't be a prosecution because the subject is dead.

I give the Vegas police a pass on this. And if I were them, I wouldn't spend much time worrying about this. They've got other things to worry about, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: I agree with you. Listen, and again, I mean, I don't mean to pass any judgment. It's just horrifying and, obviously, everybody is trying to figure out how to stop something like this from ever happening again.

MUDD: Yes.

CAMEROTA: So, James, now that you heard some of the threads they are following. They've spoken to his brother again. They've spoken to his long-time girlfriend. We understand that he was prescribed a drug, valium, for anxiety.

What -- where are you with trying to piece together this puzzle?

GAGLIANO: As more and more information comes out, and I've been saying this all week, Alisyn, it's like the more that we learn, the less we know. And to go back to Phil's point in regards to the timeline -- and I get it. You know, the Las Vegas metropolitan police department lost an officer that was at the concert, I understand that. The critical piece of getting that timeline right is this, is it speaks to motive. It speaks to the mechanisms and methodologies of the shooter.

We know that he stopped shooting at a particular point in time. Why was that? We know that he was interrupted at a point in time. Was that at the beginning where maybe it was a compressed timeframe for him to shoot now because he was disturbed early on? Could it have been much worse?

I also look at some of the things that have come out in regards to what's been found in the hotel room. We know that he had some papers in there with some studies of trajectories, you know, some physical dimensions of the trajectory, the rounds. We know that he had worked on that.

We also know that he had some drills in there, and with those potentially to put pinhole cameras in could -- we know that he wired up the food cart, he put a camera in the peep hole. If he was probably setting this up to be a longer siege. I know there's been speculation about him possibly either trying to repel out or base-jump out of there. I think some of that, again, I think, is speculation.

I'd like to see the police department and maybe the FBI kind of assume this role in the PR piece, tightening up the reports in the press.

[06:45:05] CAMEROTA: OK. Phil, James, thank you very much.

MUDD: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Chris?

CUOMO: Republican Senator Bob Corker dropping the verbal hammer on President Trump's fitness for office. How real is this division within the Republican Party? General Michael Hayden joins us with his take next.

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CUOMO: A White House official tells CNN that President Trump, quote, isn't finished feuding with Republican Senator Bob Corker. Corker is questioning the president's fitness for office. This, as a new "Washington Post" report details confusion from foreign diplomats who don't know what to make of President Trump's often outlandish statements.

Joining us now is CNN national security analyst, General Michael Hayden. He's the former director of the CIA and NSA.

Always good to have you, sir.

MICHAEL HAYDEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Good morning.

CUOMO: Operationally, from an operational perspective, what's the problem?

HAYDEN: Oh, the problem is to let foreign leaders, foreign diplomats know who speaks definitively for the United States of America.

[06:50:02] And I think, Chris, from time to time, that's going to require our ambassadors overseas, our heads of cabinet departments here in the United States to, in one way or another, tell their counterparts pay no attention to what the president of the United States just said or to what the president of the United States just tweeted. American policy is here.

Because, Chris, there's frequent daylight between the president, whose language is uncareful and Secretary Mattis, Secretary Tillerson and others who are tough but precise in their language.

CUOMO: And to supporters of the president who say I like the tough talk, it's good, it's good to set back Kim Jong-un on his heels. We've been too soft for too long under the Obama administration, what do you say?

HAYDEN: Well, what I say is I see the strategy, Chris. I do see that we're the ones disturbing the equilibrium in northeast Asia and I see why, because what was happening there before was an arc that went to a very unhappy place, a very powerfully nuclear armed North Korea. So, I get the destabilizing part. But one wants to do it with precision.

What I would say to those folks, Chris, is, what does Kim Jong-un think -- no, let me make it simpler: what do you think, what is President Trump's bottom line when it comes to a resolution? Because we've got to get there sooner or later of the North Korean question.

Mattis and Tillerson are over here talking really tough. If you use this stuff, from time to time, the president is talking really tough if you have this stuff. And those are two completely different propositions. Now, what does Kim Jong-un think and how does that affect his thinking?

It's nice to talk tough but you create circumstances where you have a higher probability that you blunder into a conflict.

CUOMO: General, let me ask you about Russian subversion, what they've been doing here and what they've been doing online. Did they need help to do the kinds of propaganda placement that they did during the election and that we understand they're doing right now to try to foment tension inside the United States?

HAYDEN: Chris, that's a great question. You're working backward now. I am, at least, in my thinking, from the sophistication, the micro- targeting, synchronization of the Russian effort.

And now, the question becomes, did they know, do they know American society well enough to be able to do that on their own? I can't rule out that possibility. But I would also now look to see, is there, was there someone who had an intimate knowledge of our society that was actually pointing the Russians in these specific directions? Because I have to admit, Chris, it is amazingly, impressively, sophisticated and targeted.

CUOMO: But men and women in your field of expertise say they've always been doing this. They've always -- this is what they do. In fact, the United States does it in different ways as well. This is kind of the state of play.

What do you see here that is extraordinary?

HAYDEN: Oh, what I see extraordinary as I suggested earlier, Chris, is the level of sophistication. You know, 20 years ago, I became involved in that cyber thing for the United States of America. And we had a great debate back then as to whether or not our business was cyber dominance or information dominance. And we went along the cyber trail frankly because this is a bit harder to do for lots of reasons, tactical, legal and policy-wise and so on.

The Russians went down this trail. They went down the information dominance trail. That's why we have a cyber command, not an information dominance command. And what the Russians have done, what make this is different, Chris, is this synchronization of all the tools of information dominant.

So, it starts with cyber theft. Remember the DNC hack. That's just act one. That's kind of the baby step.

What's really different is how the Russians now have taken that information and other information in a very elegant way, pushed it into the American information space to actually worsen the divisions we already had in our society. You know, just as a professional, sitting back, that's awesome.

CUOMO: Awesome, you mean, in terms of its effectiveness.

HAYDEN: Yes.

CUOMO: I get you on that.

The YouTube, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter -- what responsibility do you think is on private enterprise to filter for content of what is put on their platforms?

HAYDEN: Yes, here we are, two American citizens talking about filtering for content, right? That's really hard for us in our political culture. CUOMO: Bad for their business model also.

HAYDEN: Yes.

CUOMO: And not to be a cynic, but those guys are about making money. I'm sorry. Until they demonstrate otherwise, that's the criticism.

Your main goal is making money. And that's why they allowed things on general. You know better than I am. They knew what was on their sight. They do nothing but data analytics.

[06:55:00] You know, when you and I are having a conversation online, all of a sudden, I get ads that are relevant, that popped up all of a sudden on my screen. They know what's being said.

So, what duty do they have, if any?

HAYDEN: We have to work backward from the facts of the case. We are now discovering what happened on Google, Facebook and YouTube and all those other devices.

Work backward. See what a foreign power did and at that point, Chris, I do think we have some responsibility on our part to impose responsibility on them to put impediments in front of a foreign power coming after us.

CUOMO: Tricky, look, I get it. We always err on side of having a broader conversation.

HAYDEN: Yes.

CUOMO: But this is a new issue.

General Michael Hayden, thank you very much for your perspective, as always.

HAYDEN: Thanks, Chris.

CUOMO: Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: OK, Chris.

What does the president's feud with Bob Corker do to his legislative agenda? Our panel takes that up next.

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