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New Day Sunday

Boko Haram Swears Loyalty to ISIS; Obama Speaks Out on Clinton E-Mails; Remembering Selma 50 Years Later

Aired March 08, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOE JOHNS, CNN ANCHOR: Thirty-one minutes past the hour.

We are learning new information this morning about Malaysia Airlines Flights 370. Today marks the one-year anniversary the Boeing 777 disappeared with 239 people on board. According to an interim report that's just out this morning from the Malaysian government officials say there's no evidence the pilot or the crew were unstable.

We've also learned that the pinger batteries on the underwater locator beacon that would have helped find the flight data recorder had expired because of a maintenance mix-up. It's unclear whether they would have been fully functional when the plane initially disappeared. Officials also say there's no evidence of any unusual engine behavior.

The report also reveals hours of chaos and confusion between civilian and military radar operators and air traffic control. We will have more on that report at the top of the hour.

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Meanwhile, a frightening new alliance may be forming today. Nigerian militant group Boko Haram is reportedly swearing its loyalty to ISIS. Now this is believed to be the largest jihadi group to make this pledge to the Islamic state. So what does it mean for ISIS?

Look at this map. I mean the countries highlighted here indicates where Boko Haram is primarily active. So this move obviously would give ISIS a stronger foothold in Africa, specifically.

CNN's Nima Elbagir has more on this potential new alliance though -- Nima.

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christi and Joe -- a new alliance for the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram. A voice claiming to be that of the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, pledged allegiance in an audio message to the amir of ISIS Abu Bakr el Baghdadi.

If this is true this will give ISIS a scope of allegiance that stretches from one coast of Africa to the other through Egypt, Libya, Algeria and now down into that Horn of West of Africa at a time when a multi-regional African Union-backed force is eroding much of that Boko Haram territorial gain. They need this raised profile, this propaganda visibility more than ever. The multi-regional partners have come together to not only fight Boko Haram inside Nigeria and inside their own territories but also to block its supply lines. More propaganda equals more access to those life lines of foreign recruitment and foreign donations. For ISIS this also is an opportunity to strike a blow against al Qaeda and shows that it has sustained a much deeper international presence than al Qaeda has at the moment.

Whether this will be enough for Boko Haram to turn the tide against that African Union-backed force though remains to be seen -- Christi and Joe.

PAUL: All right. Nima Elbagir -- thank you so much.

JOHNS: We want to talk more now about this pledge by Boko Haram. Let's bring in CNN military analyst and former army general, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling; and CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director, Tom Fuentes.

I want to start by asking both of you. How do you think ISIS is going to respond to Boko Haram's pledge? We will start with you, General.

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Joe, it's going to be an interesting dynamic, but I wouldn't lend -- the intelligence community so far has not lent a whole lot of credence to this announcement by Boko Haram. They are the scourge of West Africa. They are focused primarily on the Nigerian state. They have entered into parts of Chad but they were not even accepted by al Qaeda.

This is an organization that has been despicable in some of its deeds, that does connect it to ISIS but doesn't seem to have the same legitimacy as a worldwide organization as ISIS has right now. So this is an opportunity for them to gain legitimacy, for ISIS to gain legitimacy as well in terms of a growing organization. But I don't think the announcement is equal to command and control or connection.

JOHNS: And Tom, what do you think about this? Is this more of an operational alliance or is it primarily for propaganda purposes?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: I agree with the General. I think it's completely propaganda. It's not a true alliance because I don't see how they can directly support each other being so far apart, having such different objectives. The objective of ISIS to conquer land and establish the caliphate in Syria and Iraq is much different than Boko Haram terrorizing northeast Nigeria into Chad and some of the surrounding areas there.

I think that probably Boko Haram is suffering a little bit under the attack of the African Union. They were able to hold their own against Nigeria by itself but it might be they're method of trying to attract more recruits on their own and maybe financial support.

JOHNS: I want to read you a quote from an expert on Boko Haram, Jacob Zen. He says Boko Haram joining the ISIS fold makes sense to both groups. It will also get guidance from ISIS in media warfare propaganda. And ISIS gets more international legitimacy as a global caliphate. But some U.S. intelligence who's suggesting these groups are actually going to clash. What do you think, General?

HERTLING: Yes, I agree with the latter part of your statement. And the experts who are saying this, this gives both groups some advantages, it does. But, at the same time, it ignores some other factors.

ISIS has had somewhat of a racist attitude toward African Muslims. They do not accept them in the fold as much. They give them the lower level task. One of the reports that a lot of the intelligence communities have seen is most of the African Muslims that report to the ISIS facilities in Syria are automatically relegated to the task of suicide bombers or even cleaning housing facilities. So this doesn't -- it just doesn't wash with me, Joe.

JOHNS: Tom, do you see potential for friction here also?

FUENTES: Absolutely. The other thing we have here is that we have been trying to rally the coalition of Sunni Arab countries to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Yet, in Africa, the African Union has been able to put together peacekeeping military forces to take on al Shabaab in Somalia and kick them out of Mogadishu a couple of years ago and reduce them to a small corner of Somalia right now. And now they are taking on Boko Haram where the Nigerian government was ineffective. The coalition of African Union countries provide a multiple military to work together is significant in Africa. We wish we could achieve that on the ground in the fight against ISIS.

JOHNS: Lieutenant General Mark Hertling and Tom Fuentes -- thanks to both of you.

HERTLING: Thanks Joe.

FUENTES: Thank you, Joe.

PAUL: Hillary Clinton is under fire over her e-mails, of course. She might not be talking about them, but we are hearing from her husband, former President Bill Clinton speaking about another controversy facing the Clinton's.

Also President Obama commemorating the landmark in Selma, Alabama saying the march is not yet over. What does he mean by those comments?

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PAUL: President Obama speaking out for the first time on the e-mail controversy swirling around his former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. She has come under scrutiny for using a private e-mail account when she ran the State Department. In an interview with CBS, President Obama said he is glad that Clinton wants to make her e-mails public.

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BILL PLANTE, CBS NEWS: Mr. President, when did you first learn that Hillary Clinton used an e-mail system outside the U.S. government for official business while she was secretary of state?

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: At the same time everybody else learned it through news reports.

PLANTE: Were you disappointed?

OBAMA: Let me just say that Hillary Clinton is and has been an outstanding public servant. She was a great secretary of state for me. The policy of my administration is to encourage transparency. And that's why my e-mails, the Blackberry that I carry around, all of those records are available and archived.

And I'm glad that Hillary has instructed that those e-mails that had to do with official business need to be disclosed.

PLANTE: You say that you had the most transparent administration ever. You said it again a couple of weeks ago.

OBAMA: It's true.

PLANTE: How does this square with that?

OBAMA: Well, I think the fact she is going to be putting them forward will allow us to make sure that people have the information they need.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: Now as CNN senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar reports it was her husband Bill who ended up talking about another controversy that the Clintons are facing.

Hi -- Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: There was a lot of anticipation about whether Hillary Clinton would address this e- mail controversy that has been swirling around her he all week when she spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative event in Miami Saturday. She didn't talk about it. She talked about women. She talked about philanthropy and the work that the Clinton Foundation does. She talked about the 50th anniversary of Selma while she took the stage with her daughter but nothing on the e-mails.

Bill Clinton the former president did talk about a different controversy, that of the Clinton Foundation accepting foreign countries' donations. Some of these countries that have a bad record when it comes to human rights or women's rights. He spoke in particular about one of those countries, the United Arab Emirates.

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BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The UAE gave us money. Do we agree with everything they do? No, but they're helping us fight ISIS. And they built a great university with NYU open to people around the world. And they have helped us support the work that this foundation does.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: So aside from the tweet that Hillary Clinton sent out on Wednesday night saying that she wants the public to see her e-mails and that the State Department will review and release them, we haven't heard from her. Keeping in mind the e-mails that will be reviewed by the State Department are 55,000 pages of e-mails that Hillary Clinton and her staff hand-picked to turn over in 2014 using their discretion obviously.

We will be watching Hillary Clinton this week. She makes some public appearances. She has some events that she will be attending in New York Monday and Tuesday that we will be watching very carefully.

Brianna Keilar, CNN, Washington.

JOHNS: Going to bring in Chris Moody, the senior correspondent for CNNpolitics.com and joining us from Jupiter, Florida. Chris, Hillary Clinton didn't say anything about this e-mail controversy in Miami last night. Surprise you at all?

CHRIS MOODY, CNNPOLITICS.COM: It didn't surprise me because we have been reporting at CNNpolitics.com that she is not necessarily going to talk about this, that the campaign -- excuse me -- the pre-campaign, if you will, is going to be taking a bunker mentality on this.

Now, that doesn't mean it wasn't audacious. She has a lot of questions to answer and they are going to keep piling up, both on the question of foreign donations and on her use of private e-mail.

JOHNS: Realistically though, if she doesn't talk about it does it just leave for this controversy to sort of grow or do you think it will actually go away -- highly unlikely, right?

MOODY: Well, her approach to this has been very interesting. She's only speaking out on social media, on Twitter. It reminds me a lot of Sarah Palin a couple of years ago when she wouldn't speak to many people in the media when questions would come up. She would only post updates on her Facebook page.

But you're right. This is going to pile up. There's more and more questions as this issue grows; more reporting seems to be coming out every day. And so I think what she is going to have to do, at least once she starts an official campaign, is to sit down with a lot of reporters and answer several questions, I mean take a big press conference.

And if she doesn't answer a couple of questions individually, the next -- any time she opens herself up to the media all of the questions are going to be about these issues and not other things that perhaps the campaign will want to talk about. But certainly when she does announce that official campaign, immediately those questions are going to be asked of her instead of possibly the things that she would rather talk about.

JOHNS: On the other hand, the former President Bill Clinton did address another controversy, the foreign donations going into the Clinton fund. Do you think that has the potential to cause problems going forward? We talked during the Clinton administration so much about foreign donations coming in to the DNC.

MOODY: Right. Mr. Clinton's speaking about that doesn't end the issue at all. There are still several lingering questions about that that the actual possible candidate Mrs. Clinton will have to answer. It's not just a matter of transparency which I thought that was very interesting. You notice Mr. Clinton seemed to be trying to make it a matter of them looking very transparent and saying, look, we are releasing this information, we just wanted you to make the decision, but that's not really going to cut it.

There are going to be more questions that reporters and Americans who want to see if they want to support Mrs. Clinton for president are going to want to have answered but this is not going to go away until they really address it. And remember, the campaign is going to be very long and it's going to be a long journey and I think this is something that is going to linger for a while and then I'm sure there will be other questions about her record that are going to come up over the campaign, just as the men and women running for president on the Republican side are going to have to answer a lot of questions about their records.

JOHNS: Really is another chapter in the complicated relationship between the Clinton's and the news media.

Thanks so much, Chris Moody, for that.

MOODY: Thank you.

PAUL: You know, as thousands more prepare to march today, the President is speaking out about the racial progress made from 50 years ago. Also though talking about how much work we still have to do.

And it's been a year since Malaysia Flight 370 vanished. But there's a new report just released that reveals some pretty new details about that flight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: What clearly happened was a massive failure of civilian and military radar, along with air traffic control that didn't cause this incident, but certainly allowed it to degenerate into the mess that it became.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN LEWIS (D), GEORGIA: If someone had told me that we were crossing this bridge, that one day I will be back here introducing the first African-American president, I'm going to say, you're crazy. You're out of your mind. You don't know what you're talking about. President Barack Obama. (END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: What an introduction there: President Obama by Congressman John Lewis. He returned to Selma but 50 years ago. He was among hundreds of protesters who were attacked by Alabama state troopers on Bloody Sunday, that is him in that picture.

JOHNS: And so today, thousands of people are set to honor the movement in civil rights and the history and the marches with more marches today.

CNN's Athena Jones once again is in Selma this morning -- Athena.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning -- Christi and Joe.

President Obama delivered a moving speech here in Selma to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. He honored those who marched here both alive like Congressman John Lewis who he called one of his heroes, and those who have passed on.

Here is what had he to say about those marchers.

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OBAMA: What enormous faith these men and women have -- faith in God, but also faith in America. If we want to honor the courage of those who marched that day, then all of us are called to possess their moral imagination. All of us will need to feel as they did the fierce urgency of now. All of us need to recognize, as they did, that change depends on our actions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONES: And so the President talked about the past and honored the past but he also talked about the present and he talked about the future. He noted that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which was, of course, the landmark legislation that came out of these marches here in Selma and other efforts in this country. He called it one of the crowning achievements of American democracy.

But he also called on Congress to do more to strengthen the Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of that law in 2013. Here's what he had to say there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: 100 members of Congress have come here today to honor people who are willing to die for the right to protect it. If we want to honor this day, let's that hundred go back to Washington and gather 400 more and together plan to make it their mission to restore that law this year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONES: And so the President issued that challenge to members of Congress, more than a hundred of whom came down here to Selma to mark this day. After his speech, the President and his family walked across the bridge, a ceremonial walk accompanied by Representative John Lewis and others who marched that day 50 years ago, along with other members of Congress.

After that walks across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the first family visited the National Voting Rights Museum. So, a really big day here in Selma -- a momentous occasion. Back to you -- Christie and Joe.

JOHNS: Chaos and confusion but no sense of urgency. New details about the night Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared -- what investigators are now saying about the pilot and the crew.

At the top of the hour, we will break down a new interim report from the Malaysian government as families come together to commemorate their missing loved ones.

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