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Teen Says He Hacked CIA Chief's E-mail; War Of Words Over 911; Not Blaming George Bush; Trump Slams Bush Over Iraq War; Trump Live; Clinton Wins Debate But No Bump; Clinton Faces Benghazi Committee This Week; New CNN Poll Says Clinton Won Debate; Bush and Trump Battle Over 9/11. Aired 1-1:30p ET
Aired October 19, 2015 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: My colleague, Wolf Blitzer, starts right now.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST : Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 7:00 p.m. in Benghazi, Libya, 8:00 p.m. in Jerusalem. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.
We begin with breaking news. A possible hack attack targeting the CIA director, John Brennan. A high school student is claiming to have gone into Brennan's personal e-mail account. The alleged hacker is also telling the "New York Post" he hacked into the private e-mail account of Department of Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson.
Let's bring in our Justice Reporter Evan Perez. He's got the very latest. Evan, first of all, what is the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security saying about this report in the "New York Post"?
EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, they're not confirming that these accounts are belonging to John Brennan and Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security. We do have statements from the CIA. One in which they say, we are aware of the reports that have surfaced in social media and have referred the matter to the appropriate authorities. The DHS says that they don't discuss the secretary of security information. They have forwarded this information to the appropriate authorities as well.
Wolf, we know that the FBI and the Secret Service are investigating these claims. And the information, really, is not necessarily classified. It's very sensitive, especially in the case of John Brennan, if it turns out to be his account. We're talking about his SF-86 Form which is a form that he would've filled out before he returned to government services, information that he was required to submit in order to get access to top secret status, security status within the federal government -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Do we know what the alleged hacker's motive was in this particular case?
PEREZ: Not clear altogether. I mean, in this interview with the "New York Post", he talks about protesting U.S. government policy towards Palestinians and what is happening over there right now. Perhaps that might be the motivation. He also talks about spending time, a lot of times, smoking marijuana in his -- in his house, I guess. So, perhaps he might have been just bored.
BLITZER: We know that Hillary Clinton, during her four years as secretary of state, only had one account. That was her personal, private account in which she did all of her business.
PEREZ: Right.
BLITZER: But these officials, Brennan and Jeh Johnson, I take it they do have a private account in addition to their formal government account which, presumably, is a whole lot more secure?
PEREZ: Right, exactly. And this is a very, very, very big difference between this and what Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, did in that she had her own private e-mail server. In this case, we're talking about private e-mail accounts with AOL or, in the case of Jeh Johnson, perhaps his Comcast account. And government officials used these types of accounts to do their private business in. They're not doing government work on it, according to any information we have -- we have got so far, Wolf.
And in the case of John Brennan, some of the information, it's embarrassing, obviously, to have such sensitive information in the public sphere, but this is stuff that, again, he would have been able to -- that he would have used this account before he came back into government service -- Wolf.
BLITZER: All right, Evan, we'll stay on top of this story. Obviously, a huge embarrassment if --
PEREZ: Absolutely.
BLITZER: -- eventually confirmed. Thanks very much.
Meanwhile, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 becoming a major issue today for the two candidates, for at least two candidates in the 2016 president campaign. Donald Trump is standing by his criticism of former president, George W. Bush. Jeb Bush is defending his brother and questioning whether Trump is fit to be commander in chief.
Today, on FOX News, Trump reiterated his point that the 911 attacks happened while George W. Bush was in charge.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: But I'm not -- I'm not blaming anybody. I don't like to go back and blame. I like to look to the future. I'm not blaming anybody. The only thing I said, well, he said we were safe. Well, the fact is we had the worst attack in the history of our country during his reign. Jeb said we were safe during his reign. That wasn't true. And that's the only thing that I pointed out. And I'm not blaming anybody and I am not blaming George Bush.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
BLITZER: Jeb Bush came to his brother's defense on "STATE OF THE UNION" with Jake Tapper.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My brother responded to a crisis and he did it as you would hope a president would do. He united the country. He organized our country and he kept us safe. And there's no denying that. The great majority of Americans believe that. And I don't know why he keeps bringing this up. It's -- it doesn't show that he's a serious person as it relates to being commander in chief and being the architect of a foreign policy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: While Trump concedes there were no more attacks on the U.S. homeland during George W. Bush's tenure, he did blame George W. Bush for going to war against Iraq.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
TRUMP: Well, we haven't had a major problem at home, I agree with that. I'm not -- I never disagreed with that. But we attacked a country. We spent $2 trillion attacking a country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.
TRUMP: We -- you know what we have for it right now? Zero.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
[13:05:01] BLITZER: Well, let's talk about all of this with a former official in George W. Bush's administration who's now a major Jeb Bush supporter, Michael Chertoff. He's a former secretary of Homeland Security. He's currently an advisor to the Jeb Bush campaign.
Michael Chertoff, thanks very much, Mr. Secretary, --
MICHAEL CHERTOFF, CAMPAIGN ADVISOR, JEB BUSH: Good to be here.
BLITZER: -- for coming in. Let's talk about what Donald Trump's allegation against the man you want to be the next president of the United States. And I think he's also, in part, referring to the conclusions of the 911 commission which did say this. It did say the 911 attacks were a shock but should not have come as a surprise. And then, it goes through all the many months, nine or 10 months that Bush was president, where Richard Clarke and others kept warning that an attack was imminent. It could be planes. It could be New York. And not enough was being done.
CHERTOFF: So, let's be clear. First of all, a number of the critical hijackers actually came into the country prior to President Bush assuming office. This was a plot that was planned years and years in advance and it unfolded over a period of time. There was no actionable intelligence that pointed specifically or even in general to an aviation plot of the kind that we saw.
BLITZER: Well, let me correct you on that because -- and this was a quote from the August 6th, 2001 -- this was a couple of months before 911. A presidential daily briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." FBI information since 1998 indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
CHERTOFF: Correct. So, that would lead you, if you were going to focus on that, to federal buildings being surveilled on the ground. My point is, Wolf, that although we had a system that needed to be repaired and President Bush did repair it, there was no specific intelligence that pointed to the plot that actually happened.
But what did happen after the plot, after that terrible day on September 11th, and I was part of this, was the president swung into action and immediately began to change the entire infrastructure of our defense. We created much harder and tougher barriers to people coming in from overseas. We expanded our intelligence capability. We tore down the legal barriers that had prevented information sharing. The president went into Afghanistan and pushed Al Qaeda out of its safe haven.
And, by the way, we discovered laboratories where they were experimenting with chemical weapons and we shut that down. All of us remember that, within a day or two after that terrible day, the president got up in front of the World Trade Center, which was still smoking, and said, we're going to bring justice to them or we're going to bring them to justice. And he did it.
BLITZER: The -- and there's no doubt all those steps you mentioned after 911 indeed happened. One step that he also took was going to war against Saddam Hussein and claiming there were weapons of mass destruction, stockpiles, in Iraq resulting in the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. troops, 10s of thousands injured. As Donald Trump keeps saying, trillions of dollars spent wasted on a war that had nothing to do with 911. His point, Donald Trump's point, is the president, President Bush, did not keep America safe when he invaded Iraq.
CHERTOFF: Well, I'm not going to quibble with Donald Trump, trying to make his words fit reality. What I do want to talk about, though, is we're not going to re-litigate 911 or re-litigate the Iraq war. What's important is what did you -- we do going forward? Right now, the threat picture around the world is worse than it was prior to 911. Now, we are much stronger in this country. We're much tougher. We're much less vulnerable.
But if you look at the spread, the metastasis, of violent jihadism, it is now spread out of where it was in Pakistan and Afghanistan literally from North Africa all the way over to Bangladesh. And that creates a much larger pool of the people who are looking to carry out attacks against Americans and other westerners.
BLITZER: Here's what a lot of Hillary Clinton supporters are now saying today, in the aftermath of this exchange between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush. If you don't re-litigate, review what President Bush's responsibility was for not having America prepared for 911, what's the point of going after Hillary Clinton on Benghazi?
CHERTOFF: Yes, I don't know if there is a point about going after people. I think the issue people are looking at in Benghazi ought to be a broader question. Did the administration fool itself into believing that it had eliminated a terrorist threat when it kill Bin Laden? Did they, essentially, engage in wishful thinking that actually impaired their ability to take a realistic, cold-eyed look at the situation in the world?
And, again, the point is not to go punish people or blame people. But as we are bow, as we see the Russians in Syria, as we see ISIS controlling territory greater in size than Indiana, are we being honest with ourselves about the threat and are we taking the steps that we need to do to suppress it?
BLITZER: Before I let you go, your quick reaction to these reports now that Evan Perez, our Justice Reporter, just reported, that some high school kid, allegedly, hacked into the private e-mail accounts of the secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson and the CIA director, John Brennan which, if true, is pretty disturbing, obviously.
[13:10:00] CHERTOFF: Well, actually, the important thing is these are not official accounts that are secured by the U.S. government. These are private accounts. I don't know what particular servers they used.
BLITZER: AOL and Comcast.
CHERTOFF: Yes, but the reality is those are commercial services and almost every service has been hacked at one point or another. And, frankly, the U.S. government was attacked, LPM was hacked. So, this is a feature of our modern life. And there is an old saying, there are two types of institutions, those that have been hacked and those who don't know they've been hacked.
BLITZER: So, what are you saying? The government officials, like the CIA director, a secretary of Homeland Security, should not have a private Gmail or AOL or Comcast account?
CHERTOFF: I'm saying, you've got to recognize there's a risk if you use a commercial account. And you've got to be careful what you put on e-mail. Now, if someone wants to download information about where you're taking a dog for the kennel, big deal. I wouldn't put highly personal things in a location that would allow it to be captured and disseminated by others.
BLITZER: I assume when you secretary of Homeland Security, you had a government account and you also had a private account.
CHERTOFF: Actually, Wolf, I had no e-mail.
BLITZER: Oh, really?
CHERTOFF: And that was the most secure of all.
BLITZER: No e-mail is pretty secure. All right. You did it the old- fashion way.
CHERTOFF: I did it the old-fashion way.
BLITZER: You actually talked to people.
CHERTOFF: Right.
BLITZER: All right, Mr. Secretary, thanks very much for coming in.
You're going to hear from the front runner of the Republican race for the White House. Donald Trump, he'll be a guest on CNN's "NEW DAY" tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. Eastern.
Hillary Clinton was the consensus winner of last week's Democratic presidential debate but that hasn't helped much in the polls. She's still way ahead but take a look at the latest numbers and what they mean for the Democrats.
And this week, Hillary Clinton has a high-profile date with a committee investigating Benghazi. We'll speak with a top member of that committee about the accusation that the GOP cares more about politics than anything else.
[13:11:43]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:15:51] BLITZER: A new CNN poll out today says the pundits got it right, Hillary Clinton won that first Democratic presidential debate. In the brand new CNN/ORC poll, six in 10 Democrats who watched the debate say Clinton won. That didn't give her much of a boost in the race for the Democratic nomination, although her lead remains very significant. And there are now new rumblings today about the Biden factor, as it's called.
Let's bring in our senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar.
Brianna, take -- let's take a look at the poll numbers, how it looks with Biden running and without Biden running.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's really fascinating, Wolf, because when you consider what -- these are Democrats. They say -- 45 percent of them say that they want Hillary Clinton to be the nominee. That's with Biden in the race. You see he's registering 18 percent there. You take him out of this race, and Hillary Clinton gets an 11 point boost. That is significant. And the advantage is very much hers and not Bernie Sanders because you can see that 29 percent of Democrats or those leaning Democratic, say they want Sanders to be the nominee. You take Biden out of the race. He only gets a bump of about 4 percent.
The other question that is pretty fascinating in this poll, Democratic voters were asked, should Joe Biden run for president? You know, is there really this appetite for him to run for president? And here's what they said, 47 percent said yes, 49 percent said no. So you see he's a little underwater there, although this is within the margin of error. It just goes to show you, Wolf, that there isn't this overwhelming push for him to get in.
BLITZER: And our Jeff Zeleny is reporting that the vice president will meet tonight with his top advisers. Presumably, he's got to make a decision within the next few days.
KEILAR: Yes, that's right. It does seem like the window is kind of closing here. Hillary Clinton had a very good debate performance. She does have on Thursday her Benghazi testimony hearing that -- her Benghazi committee hearing that she's going to do. But he certainly does need to decide and he's starting to see these numbers kind of shift away from people saying maybe he shouldn't get in. So he needs to capture that before it goes -- slides anymore in that direction.
BLITZER: I want to look at this new poll and how Democrats -- Democratic candidates, like Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, actually match up against potential Republican challengers.
KEILAR: I know you'll find this really interesting because when you pit Hillary Clinton against Ben Carson, she -- oh, actually, here we go, Donald Trump, 50 percent for Clinton, 45 percent for Donald Trump. She bests him by 5 points. The margin of error is 3 points. So she really is leading him here.
And let's pull up our next graphic and see what we have. OK, so this is her against Ben Carson. They're actually neck and neck. That's pretty fascinating.
And then take a look at Bernie Sanders, though, when he is up against Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders is nine points ahead of Donald Trump. So that's a bigger lead than Hillary Clinton has against him.
BLITZER: And we're now just learning that the former president, Bill Clinton, is actually going to go with Hillary Clinton to Iowa in the coming days, this weekend, to start campaigning for her?
KEILAR: That's right. And this comes at a -- at a time that is a big political weekend in Iowa. You have the Jefferson Jackson Dinner that Hillary Clinton is going to be at. And so Bill Clinton really seen, I think, as an asset for Hillary Clinton. Sometimes he hasn't been. But he's certainly known as someone who is a very good campaigner. And so it's a -- it's noteworthy that she's going out to Iowa with him.
BLITZER: He's --
KEILAR: Remember, he wasn't even in the hall for the debate, right? He watched from the hotel room.
BLITZER: I -- he watched it. He was in Vegas but he wasn't -- he wasn't in the room.
KEILAR: That's right.
BLITZER: But he's a very effective campaigner.
KEILAR: He sure is.
BLITZER: Very popular with Democrats.
KEILAR: Democrats love him, yes.
BLITZER: So I assume he's going to help her a lot when he goes out there with her.
KEILAR: Sure.
BLITZER: All right, thanks very much, Brianna, for that.
So, what do these new poll numbers mean for the race for the White House? We'll talk about that. The 9/11 battle between Jeb Bush and Donald Trump. A lot more with our panel when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:23:45] BLITZER: All right, let's get back to our top political stories, the race for the White House. Our first post-debate poll numbers for the Democrats and Donald Trump saying the immigration policies would have prevented 9/11. He says he's very tough on illegal immigration.
Joining us now, Kristin Soltis Anderson. She's a Republican pollster, columnist for "The Daily Beast." And Angela Rye, political strategist, former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Ladies, thanks to both of you for joining us.
Kristin, let's talk about why -- why is Donald Trump having this battle with Jeb Bush right now over whether former President George W. Bush could have effectively done more to prevent 9/11.
KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: Donald Trump thus far has focused very heavily on domestic issues, and this is him sort of trying to carve out a unique position for himself in the Republican Party on foreign policy and national security. What's curious is that he's doing it by attacking a figure who's very popular still within the Republican Party at least, George W. Bush, and doing it in a way that is sort of to the extreme of where even most Democrats wouldn't really go on this particular issue, but in doing so has kind of baited Jeb Bush into feeling the need to defend his brother, which has put Governor Bush in an awkward position in this campaign.
BLITZER: Well, you're looking at it as a Democrat and, I agree, George W. Bush, among a lot of Republicans, very likeable, very popular, very much favorable, yet that's not translating to Jeb Bush into numbers in these polls. He's not doing well right now.
[13:25:10] ANGELA RYE, POLITICAL STRATEGIST: No, Jeb Bush is not doing well, and we have seen continuously any candidate that comes after Donald Trump is on the losing side. Jeb Bush himself has experienced that several times so far leading up to this -- this Iowa primary. I don't know what else will happen before --
BLITZER: Why is that? ANDERSON: I think the reason is because Donald Trump plays by a
totally different set of rules. He effectively came out and said, if I had been president on September 10, 2001, 9/11 never would have happened. And he doesn't really have to explain how or why, he can just get to say, if I had been president, all of these wonderful things would have happened and none of these bad things would have happened, and he gets away with it. And most candidates aren't used to fighting somebody who does play by that very different set of rules. They don't really know how to handle it. So you've seen a couple of them, Jeb Bush in particular, trying to actually take some swings back at Donald Trump. But, again, it's fighting an enemy that they don't quite fully understand.
BLITZER: Let's talk about Joe Biden, the vice president of the United States. Everybody says -- Jeff Zeleny, our reporter, he says that tonight he's going to have a big meeting with his top aides, make a decision imminently within the next few days. It's -- it's really, he's got to either do it or not do it because the clock is really ticking right now.
RYE: Well, the clock is ticking, but I think Joe Biden is owning the fact that he is going to do this on his own timeline, his own way. The family consideration was the first big hurdle, whether or not they'd be supportive. We know now that they're supportive and are urging him to do this. I think the other thing that we have to consider is, and I've said this over and over again, there are a number of Democrats who would be eager to see a third term for the president of the United States. Joe Biden is the closest thing to that third term.
BLITZER: More than Hillary Clinton you think?
RYE: I think, absolutely. She has now distanced herself in a number of ways from positive policy successes from this administration, including, most recently TPP.
BLITZER: So, of Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, from the Republican perspective, Kristen, who would be the greatest threat to a Republican, whoever that might be, being elected president?
ANDERSON: You know, I think even though Hillary Clinton's favorables are not great among swing voters, I still think that she's building the kind of infrastructure and ground game that Republicans need to be very worried about. There's been a lot of talk about all of the quarterly financial reports that have come out, how much the campaigns have raised and spent. It shows that Hillary Clinton's raised a lot, certainly spent a lot of money. But if a lot of that's been on infrastructure and ground gain, that's what I think Republicans really need to get nervous about because at the moment they're all fighting one another in this very crowded primary field, don't necessarily have the bandwidth to start building the kind of machine that she's putting together.
BLITZER: And you notice, Angela, she's doing now what she really didn't do much in 2007, 2008 when she faced that stiff challenge from the junior senator from Illinois --
RYE: That's right.
BLITZER: Who eventually became president of the United States. She's talking about the fact she would be the first woman --
RYE: That's right.
BLITZER: President of the United States. She really didn't make a big deal of it seven and eight years ago, but now she's making a big deal of it. You heard it repeatedly at that presidential debate.
RYE: I think that's 100 percent right, and part of the reason for that is, there has to be something to excite the Democratic base. One of the things that the Democratic base very clearly gets excited about is making history. There are women's groups like Planned Parenthood, like Emily's List, that have taken on this same pitch, it's time for a woman to be in the White House. And Hillary Clinton is riding that out and she should. That -- this kind of messaging goes over very well, not just with the party, but with young women who are undecided and leaning more independent.
BLITZER: Is that message going to do -- it will do well with Democratic women, obviously. What about independent women and maybe some moderate Republicans out there who like -- would like the fact that, you know, it's been a long time, the United States should have a woman as president?
ANDERSON: I think it's really going to come down to the issues. And I think there are a lot of women who say, I would love to see a female president, but I don't know if it has to be Hillary Clinton. And I think that by sort of riding on this message of, you need to vote for me because I'd be an outsider, because I'm a woman. To me that sort of rings a little bit -- a little bit hollow. I don't know if that's enough to do much more than energize the Democrats that already like Hillary Clinton.
BLITZER: I assume it would energize the Democrats, but let's see what Biden does in the next couple days or so.
Let's talk about Senator Bernie Sanders, doing remarkably well, coming up out of almost nowhere. And our new poll, he says the top issue is -- the top issue is the economy, Wall Street. The poll shows that Democrats trust Hillary Clinton a whole lot more on these issues than they trust Bernie Sanders. Look at this. They trust Hillary Clinton on what would best handle the economy, 48 percent, 29 percent, 13 percent for Biden, who is not yet a candidate. We'll see if he will be a candidate. And on national security and foreign policy, take a look at this, Angela, you'll see the numbers, even a wider gap, 62 percent say they trust Hillary Clinton on foreign policy, to only 20 percent for Biden, only 9 percent for Bernie Sanders.
RYE: Yes.
BLITZER: So he's got a lot of work to do on national security and foreign policy.
RYE: I think that's 100 percent right. And he's got a few weeks to prepare before the next debate. He's got to strengthen his answers, because what he said, as you just said, rang hollow with the base -- people -- the folks who were watching that debate. You did not hear Bernie Sanders say anything convincing about, number one, his foreign policy experience, and how he would handle that as commander in chief.
[13:30:05] BLITZER: Angela Rye, thanks very much for joining us.
RYE: Thank you.
BLITZER: Kristen Soltis Anderson, thanks to you as well.
ANDERSON: Thank you.
